for the Nelson settlement for the New Zealand Company, they left Wellington on 28 June, and visited only Port Cooper and Port Levy, having no time to go further. In his report to Colonel William Wakefield, chief agent of the New Zealand Company, Captain Daniel stated that a road to the plains could be made through a gap on the hills on the western sides of the harbour between the peninsula and the snowy mountains. There was a ‘splendid district of flat land...covered with luxuriant vegetation’. The soil was of excellent quality, and free from swamps of any importance. Duppa had gone eight miles (13 km) up one of the rivers draining the plain — either the Heathcote or the Avon. Several groves of trees were scattered on the plain, these groves becoming more numerous nearer the mountains. ‘The whole district backed by these stupendous Alps affords a scene of surpassing beauty’, Daniel added. ‘I do not believe a more splendid field for colonisation than the one I have endeavoured to describe is likely to be met with. Having received this report, Colonel Wakefield applied to the Governor to be permitted to place the Nelson settlement at Port Cooper. Hobson left Wellington for Akaroa on 11 September and did not deal with this matter until after his return a fortnight later. He then informed Wakefield that as Banks Peninsula and the lands about Port Cooper were subject to several undecided land claims, including those of the French or Nanto-Bordelaise Company, the Crown was not in a position to appropriate the land for the purposes of a new settlement. He had suggested earlier that a suitable site might be found at the Thames, in the Auckland district. Wakefield rejected this alternative, and decided to place the settlement at Blind Bay, which was already within the company's territory. A year later another examination of the Port Cooper and Banks Peninsula district, to assess its suitability for his own farming venture, was made by William Deans, a pioneering Wellington settler who had arrived by the Aurora in 1840. Deans sailed from Wellington on 15 July 1842 on the cutter Brothers, with Captain Bruce, which served the southern whaling stations. In this cruise, after visiting Port Cooper, Akaroa and the Banks Peninsula whaling stations, Deans went as far south as Jacobs River on Foveaux Strait. When he returned on 3 September the Wellington newspapers