Towards the end of February 1830 the merchant brigantine Elizabeth (236 tons), of Yarmouth, sailed from London on a trading voyage to Australia and the South Seas under the command of Captain John Stewart, of Southdown, Sussex. After visiting Sydney Stewart left on 19 August 1830 for Kapiti Island, where Te Rauparaha promised him a cargo of flax in return for transporting a large Ngati Toa party to Akaroa. On their arrival there Stewart concealed the presence of the Ngati Toas for several days while he endeavoured, “by every possible artifice”, to lure Tamaiharanui, the principal Ngai Tahu chief in the district, to visit the Elizabeth. At length Tamaiharanui came aboard with his daughter, Nga Roimata, a girl of about 11 or 12 years of age. They were escorted to the cabin where Clementson, the mate, put the chief in irons. Later in the day the chief's wife, Te Whe, came on board and was also taken prisoner. That night Te Rauparaha and his party went ashore in the ship's boats and sacked Takapuneke kainga, killing every Maori they found. Altogether about 100 of the Ngai Tahu were killed, their flesh taken on board the Elizabeth to provide a feast for the victors. About 50 prisoners, including Tamaiharanui and his wife and daughter, were taken to Kapiti. Expecting little mercy from Te Rauparaha, Tamaiharanui succeeded in strangling his daughter and disposing of her body at sea. Te Rauparaha was greatly incensed by this act and, upon his arrival at Kapiti, caused the prisoners to be tortured to death. After this episode the Elizabeth sailed for Sydney, arriving there on 15 January 1831.

Early in February 1831 one of Tamaiharanui's nephews went to Sydney and reported Stewart's activities to Governor Darling. As a result of this information the authorities seized the Elizabeth and charged Stewart and Clementson with murder. On 16 May 1831 Stewart appeared before the Sydney Court, but the case against him was abandoned when it was discovered that all the Crown witnesses had disappeared. Moreover, the Crown Solicitor offered the opinion that “the New Zealand tribes, having been engaged in what may be regarded as legitimate warfare according to the usages of their own country … the captain and crew of the Elizabeth could not be charged as accessories to murder”. On 10 October 1831, shortly after Stewart and the Elizabeth had left the colony, Darling informed Lord Goderich that the details of the Banks Peninsula crime were worse than had been supposed. On 28 May 1832 the Colonial Office overruled the Crown Solicitor of New South Wales and indicated legal grounds upon which Stewart could be tried, but by this time the Elizabeth had returned to England under a new captain. The ship's owners declined an official request to furnish the names of any crew members. Although nothing is known of Stewart's fate, the early whalers maintained that he died shortly after leaving Sydney. According to this story “he dropped dead on the deck of the Elizabeth rounding the iceberg promontory of Cape Horn, and his body, reeking with rum, was pitched overboard by his own crew with little ceremony and no regret”.

The Elizabeth incident was seized upon and embroidered to suit the various “parties” of a later day, and in the course of time many gory details were added. In addition to the account given in Governor Darling's dispatches, there are also Ngati Toa, Ngai Tahu, and whalers' versions which all differ on material points, including Stewart's part in the affair. It is also not true, as has been sometimes claimed, that Captain John Stewart of the Elizabeth was the Captain William Stewart of Stewart Island.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• Historical Records of Australia, Series I, Vol. XVI, 1831–32 (1923), (Darling's version)
• The Story of New Zealand, Thomson, A. S. (1959), (the whalers' version)
• Lore and History of the South Island Maori, Taylor, W. A. (1950), (Ngai Tahu version)
• The Stirring Times of Te Rauparaha, Travers, W. T. L. (1872), (Ngati Toa version)
• Australian Almanack (N.S.W.) 1831, 1832.

The elephant fish (Callorhynchus milii) belongs to the same group as the sharks and rays and, like them, the skeleton is composed of cartilage, not bone. Elephant fish are confined to the Antarctic Basin and the South Pacific. The New Zealand species grows up to 2 ft in length and is common along the whole of the east coast of the South Island and occurs at times as far north as the Bay of Plenty. The egg cases resemble oblong flat pieces of seaweed about 8 in. in length, and the spent egg cases are common objects on South Island beaches.

The curious trunk-like proboscis of the elephant fish is probably an organ of touch, useful in locating buried shellfish, which form part of its food.

The flesh of the elephant fish is of good edible quality and closely resembles that of hapuku. It requires, however, prior soaking in fresh water to eliminate a slight ammonia taste.

by Arthur William Baden Powell, Assistant Director, Auckland Institute and Museum.

Eketahuna is situated on the banks of the Makakahi River in northern Wairarapa. The town occupies river flats and terraces on a wide but undulating and hilly valley floor. To the west the land rises to the Tararua Range and to the east to the Puketoi Range. The Napier-Woodville section of railway and main highway pass through the town. By road Eketahuna is 26 miles south west of Woodville (27 miles by rail) and 25 miles north of Masterton (22 miles by rail).

The main farming activities of the district are sheep and cattle raising and dairying. Casein is manufactured at Nireaha (5 miles north-west) and at Rongokokako (3 miles south-west). Limestone is quarried at Mauriceville (10 miles south). Eketahuna serves as a small social and marketing centre for the farming population. The main industrial activities are the manufacture of concrete products, and general and mechanical engineering.

Eketahuna was originally within the southern part of the Forty Mile Bush, which extended northwards beyond Woodville. In 1870 and 1872 large parties of Scandinavian immigrants were transported by wagon from Wellington via “Rimutaka Hill” to Masterton and there housed temporarily. In 1872 they were established at Mauriceville (named after Sir George Maurice O'Rorke. As they were skilled woodsmen, some subsisted on earnings from contract bush felling. Others were employed in the construction of the Masterton-Woodville highway. A number of these settlers moved further north later in 1872 and founded Mellenskov, which soon afterwards was renamed Eketahuna. In the late 1870s and early 1880s an association organised by G. M. Park, of Masterton, took up small holdings centred on Parkville (about 1½ miles south-west). A large area of the Forty Mile Bush was opened for settlement after 1893 and soon small communities were established around Nireaha, Newman (2 miles north), and Hukanui (7 miles north). Farming in the district developed with the comparatively rapid clearance of the forest. The railway, which began from Wellington in 1874, was not opened to Masterton until 1 November 1880. It was extended to Mauriceville on 14 June 1886, to Mangamahoe on 10 January 1887, and to Eketahuna on 8 April 1889. The line was opened through to Woodville on 11 December 1897. Town affairs were administered during the 1880s by a road board. In 1907 Eketahuna was constituted a borough. The name means, literally, “to run aground on a sandbank”, and it is said that Maori canoes could not proceed beyond this part of the Makakahi River because of shoals.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 722; 1956 census, 774; 1961 census, 771.

by Brian Newton Davis, M.A., Vicar, St. Philips, Karori West, Wellington and Edward Stewart Dollimore, Research Officer, Department of Lands and Survey, Wellington.

The honour of introducing the eight-hour day in New Zealand is traditionally assigned to Samuel Duncan Parnell. A London carpenter, Parnell, on his arrival at Petone in 1840, insisted on working no longer than eight hours when erecting a store for the merchant George Hunter. In later years other claimants have come forward to the title of founder of the eight-hour system, but Parnell's claim remains the best. The idea of reducing the hours of work was in the air in 1840. It was discussed on the emigrant ships on the voyage out, and was carried into practice on arrival. Carpenters were in the forefront of the movement; a meeting of carpenters outside German Brown's (Barrett's) Hotel, Wellington, in October 1840, is said to have pledged itself “to maintain the eight-hour working day, and that anyone offending should be ducked into the harbour”. In the Otago settlement the sequence of events was similar. A reduction of working hours, which had been agreed to on the emigrant ships, was carried out on arrival. In January 1849 Captain Cargill, the resident agent of the New Zealand Company, made an attempt to revert to “the good old Scotch rule” of working 10 hours a day, but he was unable to overcome the resistance of the working people who found a leader in the painter, Samuel Shaw. Canterbury is said to have enjoyed the eight-hour day from the beginnings of organised European settlement. In Auckland, a Chartist painter, William Griffin, led an agitation among the building trades in 1857, which achieved the adoption of the eight-hour working day on 1 September of that year.

While New Zealand was thus the first country in the world to adopt the eight-hour day, the custom was confined to tradesmen and labourers and lacked legislative sanction. From 1882 onwards, efforts were made to legalise the eight-hour day. Bills were submitted to Parliament and annual demonstrations were held in the main centres. Labour Day, which commemorates the introduction of the eight-hour day, became a public holiday in 1899 (the original date, the second Wednesday in October, was changed in 1910 to the fourth Monday of that month) but the many Eight-hour Bills which were submitted in the 1880s and 1890s failed to gain parliamentary approval. Other enactments, however, have made the eight-hour day all but universal in New Zealand.

by Herbert Otto Roth, B.A., DIP.N.Z.L.S., Deputy Librarian, University of Auckland.

• New Zealand Labour's Pioneering Days, Salmond, J. D. (1950).

Mt. Egmont, in western Taranaki, is often claimed to be one of the most symmetrical volcanoes in the world, but, like Fujijama, its symmetrical cone is characteristic of andesite volcanoes all over the world. Its height of 8,260 ft, with its base at sea level, is the average height of similar volcanoes. The peak of Egmont was tapu to the Maori, and the home of a legendary ancestor. There is no reason to believe that the peak was seen by Tasman, but it later impressed Cook and Banks by its symmetry, altitude, and snow cover. The first European to climb it was Dieffenbach at the end of December 1839. Captain Cook sighted the peak in January 1770 and named it after the Earl of Egmont.

The area around Mts. Egmont, Pouakai, and Kaitake is reserved as the Egmont National Park. Areas, on the north slope of Pouakai and in the west and south of Egmont are popular ski grounds. Ski tows are established on the north side of the Manganui River and the west flank of Fantham Peak. Puketi, a small volcano between Kaitake and Pouakai, is being established as a rhododendron garden by the New Zealand Rhododendron Trust. A small tributary of the Waiwakaiho River in the north-east of Egmont was a very important source of kokowai or red ochre used as a paint by the Maori.

Mt. Egmont is the latest of a series of three large volcanoes on a single volcanic line. The three in order of age and from the north to the south are Kaitake, Pouakai, and Egmont. The first two are much eroded remnants now only 2,240 and 4,590 ft. The upper 4,500 ft of Egmont is composed of lava flows and, although a few flows do descend to 2,500 ft, the lower part out to the coast in the north-west and south and to the base of the East Taranaki highlands was built of vast mudflows during the Pleistocene glaciation. A prominent feature of Egmont is a small subsidiary cone, Fantham Peak (6,438 ft), on the flank of the main cone and one mile south of the main crater.

A series of eruptions of Mt. Egmont about 350 years ago gave rise to the Burrell vesicular lapilli and the Puniho ash. A tholoid of porphorytic andesite occupied the centre of the crater and was partly destroyed in an eruption which gave rise to the Puniho ash and breached the crater in its north-west quadrant. Because of this history of recent activity Egmont is regarded as dormant and not extinct.

by Thomas Ludovic Grant-Taylor, M.SC., New Zealand Geological Survey, Lower Hutt.

The Eglinton River rises on the south-east side of the main divide between Lake Wakatipu and Milford Sound and flows south for 35 miles to the eastern shores of Lake Te Anau. The river flows for about 25 miles in a deep, flat-floored, glaciated valley between steep mountain walls rising to over 6,000 ft, and then follows a meandering course through scrub-covered lowlands carved out of soft Tertiary mudstones. The Earl and Livingstone mountains border the valley on the west and east sides respectively and are composed of hard granites and volcanic rocks of late Paleozoic age. The sides and much of the valley floor are covered with native beech forest. At the head are three glacial lakes, Gunn, Fergus, and Lochie.

The first Europeans to view the valley were the Southland runholders — McKellar and Gunn — who in 1861 climbed several peaks in the Livingstone mountains. For many years the valley was remote and known only to trampers, runholders, and deerstalkers. In 1935 the Eglinton Valley road was completed through to the Homer Tunnel, and in the immediate post-war years extended through to Milford Sound. The Eglinton Valley is now a popular scenic, wild-life, and recreational reserve for parties en route to and from Milford Sound. Both deer and pig are plentiful, and the trout fishing in the lakes and river is excellent. Most of the valley is part of the Fiordland National Park, although runholders lease the lower flats for grazing. The only permanent settlement is the Cascade Accommodation House, a few miles below Lake Gunn. A popular walk from the main divide is around the north slopes of the Livingstone Range to Key Summit, which commands an extensive view over the Hollyford Valley and Darran Range. The Eglinton River, Mt. Eglinton, and Earl Mountains were named by the explorersurveyor, James McKerrow after the Earl of Eglinton.

by George William Grindley, M.SC., New Zealand Geological Survey, Lower Hutt.

Long-finned eels (Anguilla dieffenbachii) and short-finned eels (Anguilla australis schmidtii) are the common freshwater eels called tuna by the Maoris. They are much alike except for the relative length of the dorsal fin. New Zealand can claim to have the world's largest freshwater eels, for specimens over 5 ft long and weighing up to 46 Ib are on record. These extra large eels are senile creatures that have ceased to obey the breeding urge to migrate and have stayed behind putting on weight.

The remarkable migrations of European and American eels to breeding grounds in the West Indies is now well known, but it is not generally realised that our own species indulge in a similar migration. The actual site of the oceanic breeding ground for the New Zealand eels is not known precisely, but is presumed to be somewhere near Tonga. Many people are loath to believe that our eels proceed to the open sea to breed, but the fact remains that the leaf-shaped larvae of our eels have never been taken in local waters.

by Arthur William Baden Powell, Assistant Director, Auckland Institute and Museum.

The conger eel (Conger verreauxi), or ngoio of the Maoris, is the most common of a number of marine species of eels. The common conger grows up to 6 ft in length with a weight of 35 Ib, is restricted to salt water, and is variously coloured, for it may be dark grey, pale brown, yellowish, or pale greenish. It seldom has markings, but is usually paler below. Other species of congers have elaborate patterns in red brown, orange, and grey. The remarkable, large, but very slender snake eel, Ophisurus serpens, attains a length of 8 ft, but its maximum diameter is no more than 2 in.

by Arthur William Baden Powell, Assistant Director, Auckland Institute and Museum.

The following changes have occurred since the above article was written:

Engineering

The University of Auckland may also grant exemption from the Intermediate and First Professional Examinations of the course for B.E. degree to certain students.

Professional Engineering

The degrees of B.E. (mining) and B.E. (metallurgical) are replaced by the degree of B.Sc. (mineral technology). The Associateship of Otago School of Mines has been discontinued.

Accountancy

The Massey University of Manawatu and the University of Waikato do not provide courses of study for the degrees of B.Com. and M.Com.

Law

Massey University of Manawatu and the University of Waikato do not provide courses of study in law.

Dentistry

The University of Otago also provides courses for a diploma in dental public health.

Teaching

The Victoria University of Wellington now provides a course of study for the degree of B.Ed.

Fine Arts

The courses for the preliminary examination for a diploma in fine arts at the Universities of Auckland and Canterbury now comprise English for University Entrance and a portfolio of work completed through the year.

Pharmacy

The University of Otago now provides a course of study for the degree of M.Pharm.

Music

All universities, except Massey and Waikato, now provide courses for the degree of master of music.

by Leonard John Wild, C.B.E., M.A., B.SC.(HON.), D.SC., formerly Pro-Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, Otaki.

The University of Auckland has a department of town planning and provides a course for a diploma. There are six subjects in the course, but credits may be obtained for passes in equivalent degree subjects. A thesis is required and a certificate of instruction in drawing office and field work.