[PREFACE]
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PREFACE
John Holland Baker seemed to be designed by nature for a pioneer colonist; he had splendid physical health, an insatiable love of travel and adventure, tireless energy and magnificent courage which at times amounted to fool-hardiness when he neither realized danger nor attempted to avoid it. He was very resourceful and able to turn his hand to anything and was quite a good craftsman. His father sent him, before he went to New Zealand, to be taught by a carpenter and a blacksmith and the knowledge he gained from them was of extraordinary value to him. After middle life worry, mental strain and over work, combined with an increasing amount of sedentary occupation, taxed his strength for a time and his health suffered, but as soon as the strain was removed he recovered his natural well being and until his final illness he was full of vigour and zest for life. At seventy and eighty he was always ready for a day's amusement or a long day's work in the garden, would undertake strenuous journeys and stay in what to most men of his age would have appeared impossibly out of the way and primitive places in the mountain villages of France, Italy, Spain and Majorca. He had a great love of children and animals and I can remember seeing him on many occasions give up his comfortable chair to the cat or go some distance to fetch a neighbour's children when he was making a bonfire in the garden and thought they would enjoy the fun of helping.
When I was a child he used to romp with me, make dolls' houses for me, wooden carts in which to harness the dogs and endless other toys. In the evenings he would tell me a sort of Arabian Nights story about an imaginary little boy called Jimmy and this story
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went on from month to month and from year to year, new adventures for Jimmy being invented every night.
A letter from his godson, Mr. C. J. Brodrick, written during my father's last illness shows the impression made on those who knew him when he was still young.
"I am so pleased to think you are feeling better, your letter tells it in every line, the writing is as firm and clear and the contents as much to the point as if you had been twenty-one instead of eighty-five, which hurdle you successfully negotiated on the 4th December. As you say, you have had a pretty good life and real enjoyment at times, thanks I think to a bright and happy nature and a knack of radiating sunshine on others, a very precious gift, mostly quickly responded to and reflected back. My earliest recollections of you are when you put me on your back and swam across the Devil's Pool in the Waihopai, or sat me on the hard pommel in front of you on old Bob, but I enjoyed it all the same and your enjoyment of life was infectious and I don't think Invercargill was ever quite the same to me after you left it."
When my mother died in 1920, my father said he would like to take a trip to New Zealand, and we landed in Auckland on Xmas Day that year. We had a delightful four months, travelling both through the North and the South Islands, visiting Stewart Island, and seeing many old friends. It was then that they said to him "You must write your recollections of the early days," and that he promised to do his best. Luckily he had kept a dairy [sic](now in the Turnbull Library) from the time he landed in New Zealand in 1857; and when we returned to England he began jotting down events from this diary and putting them
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roughly into narrative form. As the chapters were completed we read them over together and I asked questions about people and places and made him tell me as much as he could remember and then I re-wrote the greater part of the story adding the fresh matter. From time to time he made additions as various incidents recurred to him, and I also made additions about events that came within my recollection, until it was difficult to tell what he had written and what I had written, but I did not add anything without his approval. This went on for some years and then came his last illness which he endured patiently for four years; and though we occasionally read a few pages of the recollections it was not often that he felt inclined for reading and little work was done during this time. After his death I returned to New Zealand, and finding that people seemed anxious that the book should be published I determined to finish it as quickly as possible. I have not since then touched the narrative except here and there to alter a word in order to make the meaning clearer; and in one or two cases I have taken a sentence direct from the diary, but I have added a great deal in the form of notes. This has two advantages, since it makes it quite clear which is my father's story, at any rate as approved of, if not entirely written by himself, and also it enables any reader who is not interested in biographical details of the early settlers or in extracts from Survey Reports to skip the notes and read only the story. I have read through all the Survey Reports from 1860 to 1896 and have taken extracts from them and I have also made notes from newspaper reports, of which my father had a large book of cuttings, and from innumerable books on New Zealand and its pioneer colonists. Some of the notes about people are taken direct from the N.Z. Encyclopedia. I have talked to many of the sons and daughters of those first settlers and even to a few of the remaining pioneers themselves and have collected a number of
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stories of the early days that have not been published before. My thanks are due to all those who have helped me and they are so many that it is impossible to mention them individually, but I should like especially to thank Mr. L. G. D. Acland for allowing me to make extracts from his book Early Canterbury Runs, Mr. G. B. Webb of Christchurch for information about some of the Canterbury pioneers, Dr. Scholefield of the Parliamentary Library in Wellington for the elucidation of several difficult points, Mr. J. Watson of Invercargill for many stories about early Southland settlers and Mr. Leonard Tripp for reading much of the manuscript. I am also most grateful to the Government Publicity Department for permission to use several of its photographs as illustrations, to the Editor of the Southland Times for the use of the blocks of pictures of Invercargill in the sixties, to Prof. Speight of the Canterbury Museum for the photograph of Mesopotamia, to Mr. G. M. Turner of Stewart Island for photographs of the Auckland Islands and to Mr. J. L. Martin of the Christchurch Survey Department for working up an old picture of the Baker Saddle so that it could be used as an illustration. But above all I want to thank Mr. Johannes Andersen of the Turnbull Library who read through the whole of the manuscript, corrected the spelling of Maori names, suggested alterations and helped me in endless ways.
NOELINE BAKER,
June, 1932. Stewart Island.
[CONTENTS]
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CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--Boyhood.......9
II.--First Years in New Zealand--Training as a Survey Cadet--Explorations with Samuel Butler.......18
III.--Further Explorations--The Mackenzie Country and Lake Wanaka..........41
IV.--The Gold Diggings and Early Days in Southland.........56
V.--Expedition to the Auckland Islands..........74
VI.--Work in Southland 1865 to 1869, and a Holiday in the Auckland District..........89
VII.--Work in Southland 1869 to 1873, and Reminiscences of Some Southland Notables..........113
VIII.--1873 to 1876--A Year's Leave, Marriage and Last Days in Southland..........129
IX.--In Canterbury Again.........146
X.--Canterbury 1881 to 1886--Surveys at the Head of Lake Wanaka--Trip to England..........176
XI.--The Opening of the Kaikoura Road--Surveys of the Mount Cook Glaciers--Surveys at the Head of Lake Ohau..........204
XII.--Good-bye to Canterbury--First Years in Wellington--Trip to Taupo and Wanganui River.........233
XIII.--Second Visit to the Wanganui River, and Trip to the West Coast..........264
XIV.--Trip to the Sounds, Lake Wakatipu and Mt. Cook--The Climbing of Tongariro and Ngauruhoe.........287
Index.........319
[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
John Holland Baker in 1889..........Frontispiece
Sketch Map of First Exploration Trip and Explorations with Samuel Butler.............16
Samuel Butler's Old Homestead at Mesopotamia, on the foothills of the Southern Alps.............32
Sketch Map of Explorations, Mackenzie Country and Wanaka District, 1861.............48
Dee Street, Invercargill, 1931.............56
Invercargill Post Office and Government Buildings in 1860.............64
Coast of Adam's Island, Auckland Islands.............72
Cemetery at Port Ross, Auckland Islands.............80
Sea Lions, Auckland Islands.............88
James McKerrow............96
The Southland Club Hotel in the Early Sixties.............104
A View of Tay Street, Invercargill, in 1864.............113
J. T. Thomson, first Surveyor-General of New Zealand............128
Paterson's Inlet, Stewart Island.............145
Thomas Noel Brodrick.............160
Chilcomb, Mr. Baker's Home in Christchurch...........177
Mt. Cook and Baker's Saddle from the Strauchon Glacier............192
Paradise Lake on Pigeon Island, Lake Wanaka.............209
Sketch Map of Riding Tour, January and February, 1894.............224
Tasman Glacier, Southern Alps..............241
Head of Otira Gorge............256
The Drop Scene, Wanganui River..............273
The Lion and Pembroke Peak, Milford Sound.............288
Mt. Ngauruhoe.............304
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