102 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



was so frequent amongst the earliest colonists, he came down 

 to Dunedin to view the stirring life and change that had so 

 suddenly transformed the quiet of this plodding settlement, 

 and an attack of illness brought us into contact. He was of 

 rough exterior, careless in dress, and wore a conspicuously 

 large Panama hat. His eyes were dark, penetrating, and 

 deeply set, surmounted by thick, bushy eyebrows. His 

 manner was restless, and his speech, though intelligent, often 

 coarse. Some of those adjectives will apply as qualities of 

 his leaders. 



The old press had its vicissitudes too. It was of the 

 simple old type known amongst printers as the " Columbia," 

 capable of printing two or three hundred copies per hour. 

 From the Gazette office it passed into the service of one if not 

 two subsequent newspaper offices in Wellington, and then, 

 finding its way to Masterton, there printed the local journal 

 until it and the whole plant were destroyed by a fire. An old 

 pressman who had worked on it from the first then secured 

 its remains, and these were exhibited as an interesting curiosity 

 in the New Zealand Exhibition of 1889-90. I traced these 

 six years ago, lying rusty and uncared-for on a small farm in 

 the neighbourhood of Masterton, but failed in my efforts to 

 secure them. 



I have thus given at considerable, and perhaps tiresome, 

 length an account of New Zealand's first newspaper, and 

 specimens of it are here exhibited, as well as of those to which 

 I shall later refer. The curious interest connected with it 

 may be an excuse. Unfortunately, it is not possible within 

 this evening's limit to treat the rest of my subject at similar 

 length. The best mode of pursuing it will be to describe our 

 newspaper literature rather according to locality than the 

 sequence of date. 



Continuing, then, with Wellington, the paper above re- 

 ferred to as a rival of the Gazette — though an unsuccessful 

 one — was the New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson 

 Advertiser, published twice weekly, at 6d. per copy, or 10s. 

 quarterly, and at a charge of 3s. for an advertisement of six 

 lines and under. Fifty of the aforesaid dissatisfied persons 

 subscribed to its establishment, and Mr. (afterwards Sir) 

 Eichard Davies Hanson was its editor. This gentleman was 

 one of the earliest Wellington settlers, and as a solicitor was 

 there appointed Crown Prosecutor. In 1846 he left for 

 Adelaide, and there became Chief Justice of South Australia, 

 and also the first Chancellor of the University. He died in 

 1876. The first number of the paper appeared on the 

 2nd August, 1842, and the 105th and last precisely a year 

 later. The increasing depression, together with the calami- 

 tous fire of November, 1842, which destroyed fifty-seven 



