"Around the north-east of the Kaipara Harbour the author encounters the remarkable histories of seven families who had been in close contact with Ngati Whatua during the early days of European settlement. In "Seven lives on Salt River" he seeks to find out who these people were, what beliefs they brought with them from Europe, and how they adapted to a new land. Each family, in some way, left its mark, like the Blackwells, who were largely responsible for the botanical classic -- Laing and Blackwell's "Plants of New Zealand"; W. Healthcote Jackman the first successful grower of classic grapes -- success that owed something to his use of ground Maori bones for fertiliser ; Kohinga Mika Haira, mother of nineteen, and Edward Pook, who together lived a Crusoe-like existence; Henry Scotland, a father of the peace movement and a lifelong champion of Maori land rights and forest preservation; and Count Lionel de Labrosse, who preserved his aristocratic Bourbon attitudes within New Zealand's rough democracy. Of particular interest to students of history is a sympathetic, but in parts devastating, account of the life of the first New Zealand born Prime Minister, Gordon Coates. Weaving in aspects of the wider society and its people, Dick Scott, has, in this intriguing narrative with over 100 previously unpublished photographs, added a lively, entertaining and revealing chapter to the story of colonial New Zealand ..." -- Inside front cover.