Samuel Butler at Mesopotamia

It is the purpose here to put on record all that we know of Butler's home in the Forest Creek Valley and at Mesopotamia. This wild area of vast tussock slopes, bush, wide river-bed and narrow rugged gorges with its back drop of sprawling glaciers and jagged peaks played an indelible part in the development of Butler's character. Also includes Butler's Forest Creek manuscript and his letters to Tripp and Acland. I have entirely recovered health, my constitution is more robust and eyes completely recovered, he wrote to his aunt in September 1861, and moreover I felt an immense intellectual growth shortly after leaving England, a growth which has left me a much happier and more liberal minded man...

National Historic Places Trust, Wellington, 1960