to Otago. On 2-4 October he walked from the Rakaia to the ‘Rakitata’ rivers and recorded each day’s events in his journal:
Start 7.15. As there is no water on this day’s march we took a supply with us. We started early to avoid the heat of midday. The route at first lay along the beach but soon turned to the plain along which we travelled during the remainder of the day, now crossing and now turning inland to avoid the inaccessible gullies worn by subterranean drainage in the sea border of the plain.
The plain rises imperceptibly towards the South so that when we at length reached the small delta of the Hakanui or Wanganui we had to descend a steep beach of about 60 feet. . . .
3 Oct. Tuesday. Hakanui to Purakaunui.
Start 10.30 Our path today lay along the loose shingle of the 90 mile beach. At noon we passed the Hakatere. . . . Passed numerous rivulets flowing into the sea at one of which Te Moretahi we halted for dinner. Reach Purakaunui lagoon and camped. 5.45
4 Oct. Wednesday. Purakaunui to Waiterauti.
Start 8.30 The character of the journey precisely the same as yesterday. Small lagoons blocked in by the shingle skirted the beach. 10.30 Crossed a small river, the Pakihaukapu
. . . and at 2.15 reached the Rakitata the mouth of which was open. Struck inland and crossed it in 3 or 4 branches. 3.15. It was even deeper and more rapid than the Rakaia river.
. . . [Mantell’s progress was slow because his party included at least one old man, a child of five years and a woman.]
[1]
Earlier in the same year, a Scottish Presbyterian settlement had been founded in Otago. During 1848 also, the Canterbury Association came into being. This body had as its object the forming of an Anglican colony in New Zealand, and in December Captain Joseph Thomas and a band of surveyors and workmen landed at Port Cooper (Lyttelton Harbour) with the purpose of examining the ‘Port Cooper Plains’ as a possible site for this colony. Parties moved out from Lyttelton north and west and south, one group reaching the Hakatere (Ashburton) River by way of the coast. The decision that the Port Cooper plains should be the site for the Canterbury settlement had virtually been made when, in March and April 1849, Charles Torlesse, one of the surveyors, carried out further investigations as far south as the
- ↑ Mantell's Journal. Original in Alexander Turnbull Library. Transcript in Archaeology Department, Canterbury Museum.