Yet when Sovereignty was ceded to the Queen, the irregularity of Colonel Wakefield’s proceedings, and the speculations of Sydney land-sharks, had led to Lieutenant-Governor Hobson’s announcement that “the Government would not recognise the validity of land-titles not given under the Queen’s authority.” Thus land-claims, without titles (though the purchases had been made in London for not less than £1 an acre — a basic principle of the Wakefield scheme),”became the subjects of litigations and petitions, some of which were not settled for twenty years.” All of which determined, further, the course of the Beauchamp colonial line.
In those twenty years, the colonists at Wellington passed from one misfortune to the next. The first settlement had been at Pito-one (in Maori,”End-of-the-Sand”), on a beach across the Harbour from the site of Wellington. But in the teeth of wind and weather, the settlers discovered their mistake; and despite trouble with natives who still claimed the land, in September, 1840, they floated the bank on a raft across the Harbour to Te Aro (where Wakefield Street is to-day). In November, 1842, a fire fanned by wind swept across the new village of raupo thatch along Te Aro Flat. Unaware of earthquake danger, the settlers and natives rebuilt in substantial fireproof clay and brick.
Wars with the Maoris divided their energies the next year. The Chief, Te Rauparaha, had carried terror and desolation into the district afterward named Marlborough, at the top of the South Island. The site of Picton and its stream (later to be owned in part by Arthur Beauchamp), called Waitohe after the Chief’s favourite daughter, was precious to him; he insisted that the Wairau had not been specifically named in the Land Company sale, and that the beautiful country along the Sounds was still native possession. In 1843, the white men, led by Captain Arthur Wakefield, Colonel Wakefield’s brother, rashly ventured in to survey, and were slaughtered in the “Wairau massacre.” For years afterwards the situation of the English settlers was precarious: native discontent flared intermittently, fanned by martinet governors.
Yet the colony at Wellington was planted more firmly by every ship docked. Gradually it crept up the hills surrounding the Harbour:
“The country for some miles about Port Nicholson” (wrote the artist, Mr. Angas, in 1845)”is little else than a succession of steep, irregular hills, clothed with dense forests; the nearest available land of any extent is the valley of the Hutt. … By an enormous and almost incredible expenditure of labour and money, they have cut down the lofty trees and cleared patches here and there amongst the forest, on the mountain sides to sow their wheat; but owing to the steepness of the hills the heavy rains washed down much of the seed sown, and the unfortunate settlers have not been able to raise sufficient for their own consumption. The view from the hills at the back of the town is a scene of exceeding beauty. The harbour looks like a large blue lake embosomed deep in the hills. The green and umbrageous forest displays foliage equal in magnificence to that of the tropics.”
In October, 1848, the most appalling earthquake shocks ever experienced in the lives of the settlers, or remembered by the natives, levelled the city of Wellington. The fireproof clay and brick buildings dissolved in the earthquake, as the thatched huts had melted in the fire. Terrified, many families tried to flee to Sydney on the Sobraon; but the vessel in beating out of the Heads missed stays, ran ashore, and went to pieces on the rocks. Taking this as an omen, the passengers returned to Wellington, to rebuild the city.
4
In that year, 1848, Arthur Beauchamp came of age. He had developed into a young man impatient of existing conditions and restless under conventional ties. He was small and aggressive; and to these qualities were added self-confidence, a quick temper, wit (inclining, in the habit of the day, unduly towards the pun) and an immense loquacity. Something in him attracted the particular attention of his aunt, for he alone of the family seems to have been in communication with her. She imparted to him her faith in the future of New Zealand, and eventually made over to him her land-claims there.
It was an opening, and he needed one. The “British Plate” manufactory in Holborn was now closed down. His four eldest brothers had died, leaving him the second surviving son. Henry Herron, now the eldest, had been taken into the business of Mr. De Charmes (his uncle by marriage with one of the Stones) who was a merchant in London. He had now been sent by his firm to the Mauritius, whence he had moved on to Sydney, and started business there. What Henry was doing in Australia, Arthur would do in New Zealand.
So in 1848 Arthur Beauchamp sailed for Sydney in the barque Lochnagar. Pioneering in the Antipodes needed courage at that moment, when out of the dangerous unexplored were coming tales of Englishmen eaten by cannibals in New Zealand, and murdered by convicts in Australia. The voyage itself called for some endurance. It was a voyage of three or four months, during which fresh food could be had only as long as live stock survived; when passengers’ quarters were barely as good as quarters for stock; and when a part of every ship’s cargo was a bale of canvas bags for the bodies, to be let over the ship’s side en route. Boats were few to Australia — fewer to New Zealand, then. Mary Taylor, in Wellington, having read Jane Eyre, watched for a month for a mail ship to take her letter back to Charlotte Bronte:
“After I had read it” (she wrote in July, 1849)”I went on to the top of Mt. Victoria and looked for a ship to carry a letter to you. There was a little thing with one mast, and also H.M.S. ‘Fly’ and nothing else. If a cattle vessel came from Sydney she would take a mail, but we had east wind for a month and nothing can come in.”
Arthur reached Wellington from Sydney, the next year. Incoming vessels lay a mile or more out from shore, served by a fleet of small boats, each with a single sail; often these capsized in the south-westerly gales. It was dangerous to enter the Heads at all, with no lighthouse there.
The city had risen again, brick on brick: new Government offices, banks and stone buildings, tenements and homes. Two good-sized Maori pahs were near by — one at Te Aro, one where Tinakori Road ran later. Shops lined one side of Lambton Quay which twisted with the shore; the sea lapped on the other, at times rolling across the road and even into the “stores.”
About this time, too the Hon. Algernon Tollemache reached New Zealand. In purchasing thirty-four of the original land sections, he had acted as agent for the Countess of Dysart, as well as on his own behalf. He had drawn throughout the London ballotting and his numbers, from 58 to 1035, including some of the best city land — had been acquired both by original lottery and later exchange. He was summoned by letters describing local conditions.
“There is much distress in the Colony on account of the non-settlement of land claims” (ran one a few years before). …”Here we have so many barbers, taylors, ribbon weavers, button makers … please to tell Mr. Tollemache they are not farmers and we want farmers in a new colony. We have far too many lawyers …”
The New Zealand Land Company, in the effort to recompense some unpaid claims, had bought from the Maoris Waitohi (including the site of Picton); and that “blood-drenched plain,” the Wairau, had opened for white settlement in 1849; but now, in 1850, the Company had finally surrendered its charter to the Crown, and Arthur Beauchamp, arrived to take possession of the lands left him by his aunt, found that complications between the Government and the Company made it impossible to make good his claims. Chance had intervened once more. At that moment came word of goldfields just discovered in Australia; he dropped his original intention of settling immediately in Wellington, and sailed again for Sydney.
While he was on the gold-fields, another terrible earthquake shook stone from stone the remaining brick and plaster houses of Wellington; and in the path of earthquake came tidal waves. Once more the city was rebuilt, this time with square, wooden, box-like buildings, earthquake-proof, with red slate roofs — proof against fire — the style that was to remain. It was built for a commercial city, yet no commerce could completely
