Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 138

Transcript

Mr Geo. Henry Moore settled on Glenmark about 1854, when he bought under Sir George Grey’s benevolent Land System, when he as agent for Mr Kermode, of Mona, Tasmania, bought “40,000 acres of freehold, 28,000 at 10/- cash and [three thousand pounds] deposit on 12,000 acres. If not worth more than 5/- an acre, to be put up by auction”. Good old Sir George. He brought sheep from Tasmania, and from Norfolk Island the Wm Hyde in 1855 landed 65 Head cattle and 75 Leicester sheep.

Ah, Sir George was a study, and took some fathoming. Some man wrote in 1852, when he was Govr. of the Cape:-

Mankind has long disputed at the Cape, about the Devil’s colour and his shape,

The White man had declared him Black as night; the Nigger sturdily pronounced him White!

But now they split the difference and say, The thing is certain, that Old Nick is GREY!

The good old man in the sixties presented a buck and two does “silver grey” rabbits to Canterbury, and foretold what wealth their furs &c would bring in. They were the original Silver Greys in Canterbury.

Mr Moore has been a very successful sheep farmer. In the fifties and sixties he had hard work with the scab, both in cleaning and in the Courts. He found Moa bones on Glenmark in the fifties. In the sixties he was burnt in effigy in Cathedral Square, because so it was said, a swagger was refused shelter or food, at Glenmark, and died in the snow.

Mr Moore also secured under the Grey “Regulations” a splendid block in the Ashburton country.