Old South: Life and Times in the Nineteenth-Century Mainland

"A lively new illustrated history of the South Island, Old South tells a story of triumphs, tragedies and earnest hopes. ... historian Matthew Wright paints a vibrant picture of mainland life from the 1840s, of the rise and fall of the first privately founded Pakeha settlements with their hopeful framework of social idealism, business enterprise and religious conviction.As history shows, they were doomed before they began, overwhelmed by the developing southern frontier - a colourful, vigourous world of gold and wool, of social climbers, would-be aristocrats and ambitious ne'er-do-wells."--BACK COVER.-- In a big country -- 1. Oldest Polynesia to Ngai Tahu - 2. A collision of crises - 3. Serpents in utopia - 4. Puritans and pilgrims - 5. The runaway society - 6. The ins and outs of frontier life - 7. Colonial engine rooms - 8. End of the golden years?