Port Nicholson (Wellington city), whero we found only one while man, at the mouth of the river now called the Hutt. We little thought then that Wellington would become an "Empire city." It will thus bo seen that Wellington has no claim whatever to being the first settlement founded in this colony, and it was not until January 29th, 1840, that Governor Hobson formally took possession of the island in the name of Her Majesty, and proclaimed Auckland the capital of New Zealand. As tho following account of the first Bank and first newspaper in New Zealand may be interesting to our readers, we repub lish ib:— "ln the time when some of the visitors to New Zealand were ruled by club law, viz : ' that might was right :' in the days when the names of lung, Government, and Soveriegn were not heard in our then so-called ' cannibal land,' we could b^ast of a British Resident. We could then speak of our 'confederation of chiefs,' who assumed the right to hold New Zealand as intact against the intermoddling of mushroom politicians. In those day? (1535) we could boast of a Bank. At the time of which we speak the tbreo moneyed men, and the only men in New Zealand then who had any cash, formed themselves into a firm, and under their auspices they opened a bank in the Bay of Islands. For some time the Hank carried on business for all the then world of New Zealand— that is, for a small village called Kororaeka (the sweet penguin). The manager was a subject of the Stars and Stripes, who, with one clerk, were the only members of the so-called ' Bank of New Zealand.' At the time the Bay of Islands was the report of the whalers which plied for oil for the American people in these seas. One fine morning the doors of the bank were not opened at the usual hour, and on inquiry it was found that the manager, tho only clerk, and the cashbox, with all tho et ceteras of the bank, had takon a trip unauthorised in an American whaler to the North Pole, in order, as some of the non-shareholders of the bank sur mised, to open a branch with the Esqui maux. 