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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Otago & Southland Provincial Districts]

[introduction]

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It has been well said that the character of a people is proved in times of stress and trouble; and that the qualities of men are subjected to a real test when determination and effort are exercised by baffling and uncongenial tasks. These axioms were abundantly illustrated in connection with the colonisation of Otago. When the pioneer settlers arrived in 1848, their destination was a wilderness of swamps and forests, and the hills that frowned upon them were covered with bush down to the water's edge. To make a home, clear and till the soil, and build a city, required strength of character and manly effort. These things were common amongst early colonists. Had they not been, Otago would not have been what it is to-day. Indeed the Otago of today is a monument to the courage, energy, and steadfast moral and religious principles of the pioneer colonists, whose works and memories should foster in their descendants a manly passion for noble ideals. “Come, now let us praise famous men, and the fathers who begat us,” might well be a popular motto amongst the offspring of the country's early nation-makers, and nothing could be more suitable as an inscription over the entrance to an Early Colonists' Hall. The plodding bullock team and the rough sledge were the vehicles of early days, but had these not been worked to good purpose we should not now have had electric trams and cable cars. The citizen of to-day enjoys in Dunedin every comfort, convenience, and adaptation of modern civilised life and scientific knowledge; and in realising this his mind must often revert to the scenes of early colonisation, and to the difficulties surmounted and hardships endured by his forerunners, mixed with deep gratitude to those sturdy men and sterling women. The Otago Early Settlers' Association should do good work in this connection, and help and encourage the present and future times to cherish generous recollections of the pioneer colonists.

Nor need those recollections be all of the unco-serious or ultra-sobersided sort; far from it. Vivacious anecdote and picturesque incident should be hardly less plentiful in the tales of the days of old than raisins were wont to be in the plum puddings so favoured of the pioneers. Here such things can be glanced at in only a far-off manner. In the early days Dunedin had only one school, which stood in the neighbourhood of the site now (1904) covered by the Standard Insurance. Building. The beach came up to the fence, and the pupils were often punished for setting baited fish-hooks for the unsophisticated gulls. Packing cases served for boats, and many a capsize took place in the water which then covered the site of the present Triangle. However, the banks were shallow, and of drowning there was no fear and little risk. There were some cabbage trees in one corner of the school ground, and under them youthful love-making went on between little lads and lasses who are now grand-fathers and grandmothers. Then, once in the early days, as the Rev. J. A. Fenton and Mr. A. R. C. Strode were walking down Princes Street, they met a woman who was crying bitterly. When these gentlemen sympathetically enquired into the cause of her grief, she replied that while crossing the street she had lost her shoes in the mud. A policeman was called to help in the search, yet the three men, who spared no pains, could find only one shoe. Doubtless these are small things, but life itself is made up of such, just as the universe is of atoms; and such anecdotes have value as aids to a realisation of the past, concerning which much may be gleaned from the short biographies in this section.

It has been found impracticable to group here all the old colonists referred to throughout the volume. Many of them have occupied—and some of them still fill—important public, official, and commercial positions; while others are referred to in connection with the country districts, where they have so long had their homes.