11

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

New Zealand

AFTER FIFTY YEARS

y 1

EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD.
Founder of New Zealand.
(from a rake print in the possession of the author.)

New Zealand

AFTER FIFTY YEARS

BY

EDWARD WAKEFIELD

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited
NEW YORK, LONDON, PARIS, AND MELBOURNE

Copyright,

By O.M. DUNHAM.

All rights reserved,
£L K.889 V/

PRESS OF W. L. MERSHON &. CO.,
RAHWAY, N. J. U. ». A.

INTRODUCTION.

The development of young countries in modern
times is so rapid that nothing is harder than to draw
a picture of one of them at any given time which
shall be faithful when taken, but yet shall not seem
distorted, inaccurate, or insufficient when it comes
into the hands of those for whose information it is
drawn. A sketch of a country progressing as fast as New
Zealand is, resembles a photograph of a horse at full
gallop. The object has undergone a change even
while the process is going on, and has moved far
away and looks quite different before the work is
completed. Thus the artist is blamed for clumsiness
or inaccuracy when, in fact, he has been too skillful,
too accurate,^-at the time. In order to convey a
true impression of this most interesting but little un
derstood country, therefore, to those not personally
acquainted with it, a faithful writer must keep its past
in view, and must of necessity treat of its present
as a period swiftly merging into an unfathomable
future. The reason why the colonies are so generally mis
understood in England and on the continent of
Europe, is because the inhabitants of old countries
cannot realize without difficulty the marvelous prog-

IN TROD UC TION.

ress of mankind under the favoring conditions of
successful colonization. Even among themselves,
the colonies misunderstand each other from a some
what similar cause. The people of each colony dis
cern their own progress, but not that of their neigh
bors. They imagine others are standing still while
themselves are advancing.
The purpose of this book is to give to all who
wish to understand New Zealand, — the most re
markable, in many respects, of all colonies, — the
means of forming a correct idea of what she is from
what she has been, and of what she is destined to be
from what she is.

CONTENTS.

I. THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND, ... I
II. THE COLONY AS IT IS, . . . . 26
III. VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES, ... 56
IV. FAUNA AND FLORA,  68
V. THE MAORI PEOPLE,  102
VI. THE WHITE POPULATION, . . . . 120
VII. TRADE AND COMMERCE,  174
VIII. BUSINESS AND TRANSIT  187
IX. POLITICS AND LAWS,  I94
X. EDUCATION,  215
XI. TAXATION  2l8
XII. THE FUTURE OF THE COLONY, . . 222

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Founder of New Zealand. Frontispiece.
Maori Canoe Putting Off. Vignette.
To face page
Captain James Cook, First Explorer of New Zealand, . 7
A Maori Chief of the Old School, . vq
Governor Sir William F. Drummond Jervois, . . 24
English Trees on the River Maitai, Nelson, ... 32
Orchards and Flower Gardens, Waimea Road, Nelson. 48
Mount Egmont, Taranaki, .... 60
The Kiwi, a Wingless Bird, . . . 76
The Aweto, or Vegetable Caterpillar, . 82
Crossing the Teremakau in a Cage, ... 92
Hororata Sheep-Station, Canterbury, . . 98
A Wahine with her Pikanini, . ... 112
Half-Caste Girls, ... . 118
Maori Weapons — Mere — Taiaha— Quarter Staff — Liver Cutter, 119
Nelson Creek Water-Race, ... . 136
In the Southern Alps, . . . . . . . 150
Otekeike Station, ..... .156
Mining Machinery, Grahamstown, ..... 160
Views — Thames Goldfields, ... . . . 164
Aqueduct, West Coast Goldfields, . . . .172:
Artificial Harbor, Otago, ... . 180
The Bealey Accommodation House, . . . . iS6.
Parliament Buildings and Government House, Wellington, . 194.
Sir Harry Atkinson, Premier of New Zealand, . 204
Nelson College, ....... 216-
In a Master's House, Christ's College, Canterbury, 222-.

Fold out

NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY
YEARS.

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND.
There is no more bewildering or oppressive fact
for the student of history, than that, for countless
ages from the creation of man, the main divisions of
the world were unknown to each other ; and the very
¦existence of some of the finest countries in the
world was not even surmised by the most enlight
ened nations until quite within the modern period.
A famous teacher of geography, by way of an effective
object lesson, displayed to his students maps of the
two hemispheres on a large scale, so contrived that
at first they appeared blank, while, by withdrawing
¦one cover after another, as the lecture proceeded,
the various lands and seas were exposed in the order
in which they came into the world's history, Upon
this plan, the southern parts of the Pacific Ocean
remained veiled almost to the end of the discourse ;
and it was not until the whole of the rest of the
world had been disclosed and described, that the
islands of New Zealand were brought into view.
That they have a history of their own, going back

2 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
to a remote antiquity, is proved by the relics of hu
man habitation which are found there. But it is
hidden in impenetrable obscurity, — a subject merely
for the speculations of the learned, and a striking
illustration of the inscrutable ways of Providence.
As far as we moderns are concerned, this picturesque
and prolific land, teeming with all that tends to the
material welfare or the intellectual delight of man,
only came into existence about 250 years ago.
New Zealand consists of a group of islands in the
eastern part of the South Pacific Ocean, the colony-
being defined in the " Boundaries of New Zealand
Act, 1863," as lying between 1620 East longitude and
1 730 West longitude, and between 330 and 530 South
.latitude. This boundary includes the Chatham Islands-
to the east of the mainland, and the Auckland and
Campbell Islands to the south ; and in 1887 the Ker-
madec Islands, lying 500 miles to the north, were
added to the colony. For practical purposes, New
Zealand may be said to consist of two islands,
called the North Island and the Middle Island, —
not "North Island" and "Middle Island," as many
new arrivals and some ill-informed writers call them.
There is a South Island, but it is never called by
that name. It is invariably called Stewart Island.
It is comparatively insignificant in size, is only very
sparsely inhabited at a few points on the coast, and.
is almost entirely covered with dense forest. When
we speak of the colony of New Zealand, we mean
the North Island and the Middle Island, just as.
when we speak of the United Kingdom we mean
Great Britain and Ireland. The notion that New

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 3
Zealand is part of Australia is so ridiculous to any
colonist that it may not be deemed worth mention
ing here. But it is, nevertheless, so common amongst
ignorant people of all classes elsewhere, that it may
need a word of remark.
New Zealand lies 1200 miles east, and stretches
600 miles south, of Australia. That is to say,
its position relative to Australia is about the
same as that of Turkey to England. It is sepa
rated from Australia, moreover, by vast ocean
depths, the telegraph cable between them lying
for more than half its length 2600 fathoms be
low the surface. This barrier of deep sea, more
effectual than any distance, as geographers and
naturalists well know, makes New Zealand a to
tally different country in every respect from Aus
tralia. There is nothing, in fact, in common between
them by nature. Australia lies just above the sear
half under the Tropic, flat and broiling like an
enormous pancake, with little mountain ranges, like
wrinkles by comparison with its vast expanse of
plain, on its eastern confines. New Zealand rises
abruptly from the colder waves of the temperate
zone, and towers in the Southern Alps into the region
of perpetual snow, descending again by rich plateaux
or rolling hills and downs, through fertile valleys to
level plains and cliffs and rocky beaches on the coast. "
Australia is the lowest country for its breadth in the
world. New Zealand is the highest, with the excep
tion of New Guinea, whose heights are more or less
mythical. There is no indigenous animal common
to Australia and New Zealand, and scarcely any

4 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
plants. New Zealand stands out by itself in mid-
ocean, proudly independent of any continental con
nection. It even does most of its business with
another group of small islands, lying almost at its
antipodes. The area of New Zealand is 104,403 square miles,
or 66,618,160 acres, a little less than that of Great
Britain and Ireland. New Zealand is often called
"The Britain of the South"; but it much more re
sembles Italy in latitude, shape, climate, and natural
conditions generally. If Italy were insular and sur
rounded by vast tracts of water, the resemblance
would be complete. Not until this geographical fact
is more fully recognized than it is at present will
the capabilities of the colony be fully tested. Its
inhabitants are too apt to forget that they are not in
Great Britain, but in a land much more like a Medi
terranean country. Thus, if we projected New Zea
land's latitudes on the map of the Old World, they
would extend from central France, over the whole
of Italy, and terminate in Africa. It is a long,
narrow country, and essentially maritime. No
part of it is much more than fifty miles from the sea,
and most of the inhabited parts are within sight of
the sea. No country in the world has more harbors,
bays, sounds, and inlets. It has no great rivers, be
cause there is nowhere in New Zealand sufficient
space between the mountains and the sea for a river
to grow great ; but it has innumerable streams, creeks,
lakes, and lagoons, which make it the best-watered
country in the southern hemisphere. The climate is
in the fullest sense of the term temperate. There

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 5
is no excessive heat in summer and no excessive cold
in winter. Yet, owing to its great length from north
to south — about 1500 miles — there is a wonderful
variety of climate within a narrow range of temper
ature. In summer, the north of the North Island
has a dash of the tropics ; while the Scottish settlers
in the far south like to say that their winter reminds
them of Caledonia, stern and wild. The central
settlements about Cook Strait enjoy a climate so
equable that summer heat and winter cold are little
more than phrases.
New Zealand was unknown to Europeans until
the year 1642, in the reign of King Charles the
First, when Anthony Van Diemen, the Dutch
Governor of Batavia, despatched an expedition
under the famous navigator, Abel Jansen Tasman,
"for making- discoveries of the unknown South
land." Tasman made the coast of New Zealand on
the 10th of December, 1642, and anchored off the
beach of Warewarengi, near Separation Point, Mas
sacre Bay, in the Province of Nelson. He first
called it Staaten Land, mistaking it for a vaguely
described territory which had been discovered some
time before by Schouten and Le Maire to the
east of Tierra del Fuego. He says in his jour
nal : " This is the second land discovered by us.
We named it Staaten Land in honor of the
States General. It is possible that this land
joins to the Staaten Land ; but it is uncertain.
It is a very fine country, and we hope it is part of
the unknown South Continent." It was not until
the following year, when Hendrick Brower's expe-

t> NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
dition ascertained the true position of Schouten and
Le Maire's Staaten Land, that Tasman's error was
rectified. His new discovery was then named New
Zealand, probably by the Dutch cartographers, and
for no better reason than that it was supposed to lie
near New Holland, just as old Zealand lies near old
Holland. The name nowhere appears in Tasman's
journal ; but it was used in a sculpture of the globe,
showing the new discoveries, in the Staat House at
Amsterdam, in 1646. A more unfortunate misnomer
never occurred ; and it is difficult to believe that a
man with such eyes for nature as Tasman had, could
have found it in his heart to fasten on the beautiful,
sunny, mountainous, ocean-crowning land he had
discovered, the name of a foggy shoal like Zealand.
But Tasman certainly adopted it, and to make sure
that the country should not be renamed by anybody
else, he registered its christening, as it were, in his
chart of the South Seas, published at Amsterdam
in 1655. It does not seem to have occurred to Tas
man to take possession of his discovery, which he
evidently regarded as a mere stage, which might or
might not prove important, in his quest of New Hol
land, the " unknown South Land " of the Dutch
navigators ; nor does he give any very detailed ac
count of the country. On the day after his arrival,
one of his boats was attacked by the natives, and the
quartermaster and four men were killed. Tasman
gives an excellent drawing of this conflict, with an ac
curate representation of a Maori war canoe, manned
by eleven men. " These people," he says, " as well
as we could judge, were of our common stature,

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 7
strong-boned, and of a rough voice. Their color is
between brown and yellow ; their hair black, which
they tie up on the crown of the head, like to the
Japanese, and wear a large white feather upright in
it." This is the earliest description on record of the
natives of New Zealand, and it is rather remarkable
that it makes no mention of their being tattooed, a
peculiarity which could hardly have escaped notice.
Tasman called the place Moordenaars Bay, Murder
ers' Bay — whence it is called Massacre Bay to this
day. This untoward event, and the fear that he
should be unable to obtain water or fresh provisions,
led him to sail away northward. He sighted and
named several points, notably Cape Maria Van Die-
man, after the wife of his patron the Governor, and
the Three Kings, because they were discovered on
the day of the Epiphany. He left New Zealand on
the 6th of January, 1643, having never set his foot on
the shore. From that date it remained unvisited
for more than a century, a fact which is probably
due to the disturbed state of Europe occupying the
attention of the maritime nations.
On the 8th of October, 1769, in the reign of King
George the Third, Captain James Cook, being then
on his first voyage of discovery, to observe the transit
of Venus at Tahiti, landed at Poverty Bay, on the east
coast of the North Island. He remained in the coun
try for more than six months, and made a careful and
wonderfully accurate observation of it. He again
visited New Zealand twice in 1773, and twice in 1774,
spending from a fortnight to three months there on
each occasion. To Captain Cook, therefore, though

S NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
he was not its first discoverer, must be attributed
all the honor of having first explored New Zealand,
brought it fully within the knowledge of the civilized
world, and paved the way for the British occupa
tion. Captain Cook's account of New Zealand, which is
singularly minute, leaves no doubt that it was in
precisely the same condition in the middle of the
1 8th century as it was in when colonization began
within the memory of persons still living. When
Captain Cook, in accordance with his regular prac
tice, asked the natives the name of their country,
he was told that the North Island was called Hemea
hi no Maui, " a thing fished from the sea by Maui,"
a mythical hero or demigod ; and the Middle Island,
Te wahi pounamu, or, " the place of greenstone."
These ancient Maori names, more or less corrupted,
still disfigure many maps of New Zealand. It may
be well to state here that they never- were used since
the settlement of the colony, and are now as obsolete
as the ancient Cymric names of Great Britain.
From the date of Cook's last visit in 1774, New
Zealand remained unvisited by any European for
nearly twenty years ; but in the mean time the colony
of New South Wales, on the eastern side of the con
tinent of New Holland, had been founded as a humane
means of disposing of the criminal population of the
Mother Country ; and Norfolk Island, which is geo
logically, though not politically, part of New Zealand,
had been occupied for a branch of the main penal es
tablishment at Sydney. In 1793 Governor King, of
New South Wales, sent a vessel to New Zealand, to

CAPTAIN JAMES CvOOK.
First Explorer of New Zealand.

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 9
kidnap natives, to teach the English at Norfolk
Island how to dress flax, Phormium tenax, a gigantic
lily, the leaves of which, growing to a length of ten
feet or even more, contain a fibre of immense
strength. After that, the intercourse between New
South Wales and New Zealand slowly but steadily
increased. These seas at that time abounded in whales, and
whaling ships of various nations frequented the fish
eries and carried on a precarious trade with the na
tives ; while the value of the Kauri pine, Dammara
Australis, in the far north, had already been discov
ered, and brought many vessels to Whangaroa and
the Bay of Islands for spars. In the year 1809 the
ship " Boyd," calling for spars, was wrecked at Whan
garoa, and her captain and crew were killed and eaten
by the natives. In short, while the ferocity of the Ma
oris, and the ignorance of the Europeans as to how to
deal with them, effectually debarred anything like
peaceful settlement, these very circumstances were
bringing about a state of affairs which led to the
colonization of the islands. The massacres and
outrages, for which the Maoris were by no means
alone to blame, made it absolutely necessary for
some sort of authority to be set up. It is curious
to note that during the earliest years of the century
it was a common practice for Maoris to visit Austra
lia, or even Great Britain, either serving as sailors or
going as passengers ; a practice which is almost un
known now; but, far from this tending to the civiliza
tion of the islands, the travelled Maoris appear to have
returned more ferocious and infinitely more vicious

10 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
than when they went away. They brought back fire
arms and steel implements, and used them ruthlessly
against their tribal enemies, for conquest or revenge.
By the year 1814, what with whalers and traders,
and runaway sailors and escaped convicts, all fighting
with and corrupting the natives, New Zealand had
become such a pandemonium that the authorities at
Sydney determined to exercise some control over it.
New Zealand was accordingly declared a dependency
of New South Wales ; the Reverend Samuel Mars-
den, Colonial Chaplain, was sent to the Bay of Is
lands, on the east coast, north of Auckland, to
establish a mission station ; and Mr. Thomas Ken
dall, another missionary, was appointed Resident
Magistrate, with three Maori chiefs, Ruatara, Hongi,
and Koro Koro, as Justices of the Peace, to suppress
outrages. The appointment of Mr. Kendall was the
commencement of British authority in New Zealand,
while that of the three Maori justices was the found
ation of what is now the most numerous commission
of the peace in the world, in proportion to popula
tion. This attempt at a governmental organization,
however, proved totally inadequate, and for the next
ten years or more the relations between the Maoris
and their European visitors consisted of chronic
warfare, conducted with the utmost barbarity on
both sides.
In 1820 Mr. Kendall took three of the greatest
Maori chiefs, including Hongi, one of his brother
magistrates, to England, in the hope of improving
this disgraceful state of affairs, and Hongi was pre
sented to King George the Fourth, who loaded him

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. II
with gifts. These gifts Hongi traded for 300 mus
kets at Sydney, and, returning to New Zealand, he
literally exterminated some of the northern tribes,
and carried out a series of bloody conquests which
gained for him the name of the Napoleon of New
Zealand. The islands were now given over to inter-
necine warfare, in which the more adventurous of
the Europeans took an active part, or which they
turned to their account for the sale of fire-arms or
the acquisition of land. The scandalous state of the
country had by this time attracted the notice of the
Imperial Parliament, and one act after another was
passed for increasing the authority of the govern
ment of New South Wales over it, which was further
supported by an occasional visit of a man-of-war,
with a small body of troops. In 1825 a company
was formed in London, under the auspices of Lord
Durham, for systematic colonization in New Zea
land ; but when the adventurers arrived, they were
so terrified by the scenes they witnessed that they
abandoned the project. In 1831 a number of chiefs,
acting under missionary influence, petitioned King
William the Fourth for British protection, and
two years later a British Resident was appointed
with large nominal powers. A second Resident was
appointed in 1835. The efforts of these officials
appear to have been directed towards the establish
ment of a Native State under British authority ; but
nothing but anarchy followed. The number of
European settlers was now rapidly increasing, and
in 1838, when the population of the principal settle
ment at Kororareka, Bay of Islands, was about a

12 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
thousand, they held a meeting and established a
provisional government.
It was now seen that New Zealand could have no
other destiny than to be a British colony, and re
peated efforts to get the subject dealt with by Par
liament having failed, a day came when that destiny
was fulfilled in an unexpected manner. Edward
Gibbon Wakefield, a man of genius, equally far-see
ing in his plans, and intrepid in his execution of
them, who had long cherished a keen ambition to
found a young British nation in the South Seas, free
from what he saw, with singular penetration, to be
the evils of the convict system, determined to take
the step from which there could be no recall. He se
cretly formed the New Zealand Company, with Lord
Durham at their head ; and they, without waiting
for. any legal sanction; sent a ship to take possession
of the country. On the 30th of September, 1839,
Colonel William Wakefield, the company's principal
agent, brother of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, took
formal possession at Port Nicholson. A considerable
fleet of ships immediately followed, and by the end
of 1840 the New Zealand Company had disembarked
1200 settlers, and founded the city of Wellington,
now the capital of the colony. The New Zealand
Company having thus forced the hand of the Impe
rial Government, hasty measures were adopted for
counteracting what appeared to the Colonial Office
to be a dangerous if not a treasonable enterprise.
They still adhered, however, fo the idea of a Native
State, under the jurisdiction of the British Governor
of New South Wales, and the boundaries of that

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 13;
colony having been extended, so as to include New
Zealand, Captain Hobson, who had visited the coun
try before in the command of H. M. S. Rattlesnake,
was sent down with instructions to endeavor to ob
tain the sovereignty of the islands, and then to act
as Lieutenant-Governor. For a time there appeared-
to be serious danger of a conflict between the two
authorities, the Queen's government, established by
Lieutenant-Governor Hobson at the Bay of Islands,
and the less regular but much more substantial
organization formed by the New Zealand Company
under the presidency of Colonel Wakefield at Wel
lington. This, however, arose entirely from misun
derstanding, and by the end of 1840 all differences
had been adjusted. In November of that year
New Zealand was created a separate colony, under
a government consisting of Captain Hobson as Gov
ernor, a Legislative Council of six, and a complete
judicial and official establishment. By the treaty of
Waitangi, 6th of February 1840, the natives of the
North Island had nominally ceded the sovereignty of
the island to the Queen, and that of the Middle Island
was assumed on the ground of discovery. A charter
was then granted by the British Government to the
New Zealand Company, who were more actively than
ever engaged in the practical work of colonization, and
under whose auspices immigration progressed apace.
At one stroke Colonel Wakefield purchased the land
of the Middle Island from the natives, under an
agreement called the Ngaitahu Deed, signed by
him and the chiefs on board a man-of-war in Aka-
roa Harbor. The way was thus immediately opened.

14 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
for the peaceable settlement of that fertile and beau-
ful territory which may now be justly described as
the most English part of the British Empire out of
England. Simultaneously the New Zealand Com
pany had formed the charming settlement of Nel
son ; and other companies or expeditions being
formed on the same model, though on a smaller
scale, the population of the colony by Europeans
thus went on from many points at once..
But trouble was ahead. The difficulty of securing
a title to land, which is always the greatest difficulty
in the first settlement of new countries, was aggra
vated in the case of New Zealand by two causes.
The Maoris, who were the original owners of the
whole soil, had no conception of individual posses
sion of land, their tenure being purely tribal, that is
to say, communal tenure, acquired by conquest or
usage. Even when the chiefs had sold land, or pro
fessed to have sold it, the position of the individual
purchaser remained very precarious. When a
Maori tribe entered into possession of land in the
"good old days," they habitually exterminated the
former owners and not unfrequently ate them.
This obviated any further complications as to title.
But when a European bought land from a chief or
chiefs, he never knew how soon or how often his
title might be disputed, either by the sellers, on the
ground of insufficient price, undefined boundary, or
what not, or by other natives on the ground that
they, and not the sellers, were the real owners of the
land. These early land transactions had some very

A MAORI CHIEF OF THE OLD SCHOOL.
From Life,

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 15
curious and amusing features. For example, it was
a rule of law, — if we may apply such a term to deal
ings which were under no law, — or at all events an
ingrained idea with the Maoris, that in selling land,
nothing was contracted away from the tribe except'
what was actually expressed in the deed. Thus, if
a deed was made merely purporting to sell to a
European the land comprised by such and such
boundaries, the purchaser soon found himself pre
cisely in the position of Shylock when Portia in
sisted on the strict interpretation of the pound of
flesh. The land belonged to the purchaser, it is
true ; but there was nothing in the deed to say that
the tribe had parted with any of their rights in the
trees, the grass, the streams, the fish, the birds, or
anything else except the soil itself. Thus the Pa-
keha, the European, found himself exposed to inces
sant trespass, or claims of entry, which practically
nullified his title. There are deeds still in existence
which, to obviate this, are so drawn as to set forth
in the minutest detail the absolute sale of all natural
objects upon or below the land to be conveyed, even
mentioning1 such intangible easements as the sun-
shine, the air, the rain, and the mist, so as to leave
no loophole for the ingenuity of Maori casuistry.
If the Pakehas and the Maoris had been left to set
tle these matters among themselves, nevertheless,
they would doubtless have soon arrived at a satis
factory or at least a practicable system. , But the
Government made confusion twice confounded by
declaring all titles invalid which did not issue from
the Crown. The inevitable result of this was to

16 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
bring the settlers and the Maoris into conflict for
the occupation of the land. In 1843 began that
organized struggle which was nothing less than a
war, lasting, with some longer or shorter intervals,
until 1869, the smoldering animosities of which are
still to be found in the fanatical demonstrations of
the " prophet " Te Whiti at Parihaka, and the sul
len, isolation of the older chiefs of Waikato.
There is no good object to be gained by tracing
the history of that conflict here ; for, except for the
numberless instances of warlike prowess and individ
ual heroism which it contains, it is not creditable to
either race, and the sooner it is forgotten the better.
Suffice it to say that, from the beginning, there never
could be any doubt inthe mind of any onecompetent
to form an opinion, as to what the issue of it would be.
From the Wairau massacre in 1843, when Captain
Arthur Wakefield, R. N., the New~Zealand Compa
ny's agent for the settlement of Nelson, and twenty-
one of the settlers were killed by the Maoris under
\ the chiefs Te Rauparaha and Rangihaeta, until the
"close of the war against Titokowaru and Te Kooti
\in 1869, the Europeans have steadily and rapidly
gainecTpossession of the land, while the Maoris not
only lost possession of it, but themselves vanished
like smoke before the wind. The colony is now en
tirely at peace, and life and property and rights of
all kinds are actually safer there than they are in
the Mother Country. But it is an European country
instead of a Maori country. Yet it cannot be said
with an atom of truth that the conquering race made
a solitude and called it peace. They found a hell

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. I?
of barbarism and bloodshed, and through half a cen
tury of chaos, and battle, and terror, and sorrow,
and anxiety, they have made a paradise of humanity
and happiness. In fifty years, 600,000 Europeans
and 40,000 civilized natives have taken the place of
100,000 ferocious cannibals. That is, in brief, the
history Of the war in New Zealand, and the events
preceding it or attendant upon it. The manner of
it may be objected to ; but the fact cannot possibly
be deplored from the point of view of the welfare of
mankind ; whilst it is difficult to understand from
what impulse of sentiment, not altogether fantastic,
it can be desired that the page of history in New
Zealand should be turned back. A vigorous, free,
young civilized nation has been founded on the
grave of a sanguinary, degraded, and effete barbar
ism. Omelettes are not made without breaking eggs,
and it is vain to grieve over the shells. Out of evil
cometh good, moreover, and who can tell how much
the discipline of the long wars contributed to
strengthen the morale and mold the character of
the young nation, or even to advance their material
progress ? Certainly, during the period of the wars,
that progress was continuous and rapid ; and it can
not be doubted that the presence in the colony for
years of a British army of 10,000 men of all arms, and
the enrolment of an equal number of colonial troops,
exercised a great and a beneficial influence on the
population. It was not like fighting on the Continent,
or in Ashanti, or Zululand, where, when it was over,
the army retired from the country, leaving only
graves and ashes to mark where they had been. In

18 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
New Zealand, all the ground that was gained was
held, and great numbers of the military themselves
became settlers, which they were encouraged to do
by the laws of the country. It was more like a
Roman conquest, where the plow followed the
sword, where the legionaries were allowed or required
to colonize where they had conquered ; and where
they made their mark for alL time, both on the face
of nature, and on the character of the people.
The wars seemed a terrible misfortune and desola
tion at the time ; but they forced the colony into
prominence at home ; they brought an energetic, self-
reliant, and high-spirited population to the colony ;
and they tended enormously to hasten the occupation
of the land. New Zealand is the only colony of
Australasia which has passed through the fire of a
severe and prolonged military conflict as the condi
tion of its existence ; and in that fact will be found
one of the. main causes which distinguish it so
sharply from the other colonies.
Long before the wars were over, the colony had
settled down upon a secure foundation of material
prosperity and rapidly growing wealth. It had
obtained self-government and carried its princi
ples to a greater length, and with more complete
success, than ever was done elsewhere in so
short a time. Finally, it had conclusively proved
its entire capacity of self-defense and self-reliance
in all respects. The population had increased
from 120,000 in 1854, the year when self-govern
ment was established in the colony, to 237,000
in 1869, when the war came to an end ; and during

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 19
the same period, the revenue had risen from ^292,-
000 to ,£1,454,000. It may well be asked with aston
ishment by the readers of this book who have no
acquaintance with the methods of colonization, how it
was possible for such progress to be made in fifteen
years, notwithstanding the burden and discourage^
ment of a costly and bloody war, added to all the diffi
culties and hardships inseparable from early settle
ment. It may reasonably be asked, What was the
attraction which drew to the colony so many people
and so much capital ? The reply is in one word, —
land. Until 1856 the acquisition of land by Euro
peans was insignificant, owing to the insecurity of
title; and land transactions principally consisted of
disputes with the government or of more or less
questionable dealings on the chance of some day
getting either a good title or compensation in money.
By 1856, however, the official organization of the
Colonial Government was complete, and free trade
in land, with an indefeasible title direct from the
Governor, — a Crown Grant, the most precious pos
session of every settler — was the recognized prin
ciple of colonization. In that year 51,000 acres
were sold for ,£33,000; and 14 acres were granted
free of cost ; the latter system being adopted in
some parts of the colony for the encouragement of
immigration and of military and naval settlement, or
for the satisfaction of old claims or. the adjustment
of disputes. Between 1856 and 1869 the disposal
of land under these two systems went on at such a
pace that by the latter year 5,000,000 acres had been
sold for ,£4,000,000, and 700,000 acres had been

20 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
granted free of cost. That is to say, in thirteen years
an area nearly as large as Belgium had passed into
private hands, and four millions sterling had been re
ceived into the Treasury for expenditure on roads or
other public works for the further settlement of the
country. What was done with the land thus redeemed from
the wilderness, may easily be gathered from the fact
that during the same period of thirteen years, from
1856 to 1869, the export of wool had increased
from .£146,000 to ,£1,370,000; of flax, from ,£552 to
,£45,000 ; of Kauri gum, from ,£18,000 to £1 1 1,000 ;
and so on ; the total value of produce exported
having risen from ,£318,000 to ,£1,728,000 a year, in
addition to gold worth ,£2,362,000, or ,£4,090,000 in
all. By this time 800,000 acres of land had actually
been brought into cultivation, while the flocks and
herds depastured on the uncultivated land, numbered
9,000,000 of sheep and 400,000 cattle. In a word,
the colony had progressed from the stage of a
"plantation," a scattered group of struggling bush
settlements, to that of. a thriving agricultural and
pastoral country, producing more, in proportion to
the area dealt with, and the number of people em
ployed upon it, than any other such country on
earth. Those who really wish to know the truth
about New Zealand should impress it on their mind
that, from the beginning, it has been above all things
a farming colony ; that all its main progress hitherto
has consisted of agricultural and pastoral progress ;
and that, romantic as its history has been, and wild
and beautiful as its scenery is, its most remarkable

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 21
and most important characteristic is its unequalled
suitability for husbandry and pasturage, the most
ancient, the most beneficent, and the happiest occu
pations of civilized man. The rural scenery of New
Zealand is not less worthy of the attention of the
capitalist or the working settler than its natural
wonders are of the attention of the traveler or pleas
ure-seeker. The story of the colony may now be brought
speedily to a close. It may be convenient here to
mention that gold was discovered in various parts
of New Zealand at a very early date, and that gold-
mining has had a considerable share in its advance
ment. From 1857 to i860 the export of gold fluc
tuated from ,£40,000 to ,£17,000, and seemed to be
dwindling away, when, in the latter year, deposits of
extraordinary richness were found in the southern
part of the Middle Island, and at once attracted a
large population from Australia. The value of the
gold export rose in a single year to ,£752,000, and
in 1863 it amounted to no less than ,£2,431,000.
Other discoveries followed in both islands, and by
1869 the total value of gold exported reached the
enormous sum of ,£19,500,000. Ever since then,
this industry has gradually declined, and of late
years it has been of comparatively little importance.
It will probably never again exert any very marked
influence on the fortunes of the colony ; but in any
retrospect of the colony's growth it would be wrong
to overlook or underrate the influence which the
gold discoveries did exert during a critical period of
more than ten years. They not only brought popu-

2 2 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
lation and produced vast wealth, but they stimulated
commercial enterprise of every kind, and accelerated
the civic and social* development of the community
to a surprising extent. Vestigia nulla retrorsum is
strikingly applicable to colonies. They never with
draw or retrace their steps ; and, though the actual
profitableness of gold discoveries may be questioned,
and their industrial importance is transitory, there
is no denying that in habitable countries like New
Zealand, the gold-miner marches in the van of civili
zation, and the high-water mark of the gold export
indicates also a flood tide of general activity and
progress, from which there is no ebb.
The year 1869 has been taken for an epoch in the
history of New Zealand for more than one reason.
It saw the close of the native wars, and it was the
eve of the Public Works Policy. Until then, public
works had been locally administered by the Provin
cial Governments, and though in some instances they
were executed with singular energy, efficiency, and
foresight, they were carried out on a modest scale
and at a moderate rate of progress. There were
only four short lines of railway in the colony, not ex
ceeding 150 miles in all. Generally speaking, all the
public works in the colony had, up to 1869, been
constructed out of receipts from land sales, or other
local revenue, supplemented in some cases by loans
raised for specific purposes, locally secured, and
grudgingly authorized by the colonial legislature.
In 1870 all this was suddenly changed. It was de
termined to borrow ten millions on the security of the
colony and to spend the whole of it in ten years on

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

23

public works and immigration, especially on railways.
The results were very remarkable. The whole col
ony entered upon a career of activity and commer
cial excitement such as had never been dreamt of
before. The expenditure of the borrowed money
rapidly exceeded the original estimate of a million a
year. In 1875 it reached the enormous sum of
,£3,107,867. Private speculation was correspond
ingly stimulated, and as the construction of railways
advanced, the receipts from land sales mounted up
proportionately to the public works expenditure. In
the two years 1877 and 1878, the cash actually re
ceived at the various land offices exceeded ,£2,500,000.
This, in its turn, was spent on local public works, so
that the colonial and local public works expendi
ture together was for some years not less than four
millions a year. The ten million scheme of 1870 was
soon extended. One Loan Act followed another. By
the end of 1887, more than twenty-four millions of bor
rowed money had been spent, in addition to eight mil
lions of land funds— thirty-two millions in sixteen years.
The colony then had 1800 miles of railway, besides a
vast extent of public works of other kinds : roads,
bridges, water-races, public buildings, and so on.
The receipts from the railways amounted to a mil
lion sterling annually. The population had risen
during these sixteen years from 248,000 to 600,000, of
whom about 100,000 were free or assisted immigrants
brought out under the Public Works and Immigra
tion Policy. The face of the country and all the
conditions of settlement were changed. The asper
ities of the early days were entirely done away with,

24 NE.W ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
and life in the colony was made as easy as life in
any old country, if not easier.
By this time, however, it was plainly seen by all
who chose to look the facts in the face, especially
those possessing a large stake in the colony, that the
beneficial effects of a lavish expenditure of borrowed
money were more apparent than real ; or, rather,
that while the burden of the public and private debt
was immediate and considerable, the remunerative
results of the expenditure were less so. In other
words, it was found impossible, by any amount of
expenditure, to force the colony to progress at a rate
proportionate to the expenditure. It is a most
striking fact that though New Zealand has spent
more than thirty millions on public works in six
teen years, yet, taking one year with another, neither
its export nor its revenue has increased during that
period at any greater rate than it increased at be
fore. Even the increase of its population has been
no greater during these sixteen years than it was
during the preceding sixteen years. Yet there can
be no comparison at all between these two periods
as regards the conveniences of life or the facilities
for industry and commerce. The truth is that the
profit of this enormous expenditure is the heritage
of the future population of the country, who will
find everything done for them which the early set
tlers had to do for themselves, and whose burdens
will be a bagatelle compared with those which the
colonists have hitherto had to bear. Discerning
this, the New Zealand Parliament in 1887 deter
mined to bring the public works expenditure to a

MAJOR-GEN. SIR W. F. DRUMMOND JERVOIS, G.C.M.G., C.B., R.E.
Governor of New Zealand, 1883-89.
ORGANIZER OP THE DEFENSES OF AUSTRALASIA.

THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND. 25
close, and after that to dispense with further bor
rowing, with a view to depending entirely upon
revenue for the future, This wise decision has been
cordially approved of by the people, except the most
thoughtless and irresponsible classes, who, happily,
have no control over public affairs in that colony.
Already the good effects of this are apparent in the
restoration of the public credit, the revival of com
mercial confidence, and an increased spirit 'of enter
prise and self-reliance among the colonists. This
year, 1889, marks a new departure in the history of
New Zealand. She has passed through a trial of
financial depression, not less severe than the trial of
war she passed through before ; but now, as then,
she has merely recule pour mieux sauter, stood back
to jump the further. No reasonable man, who is
experienced in her past and acquainted with her pres
ent, can for a moment doubt that she is on the
threshold of a future pregnant with prosperity and
happiness. She stands, under sunshine or clouds,
an unrivaled monument of the success of the god
like art of colonization, skillfully, courageously, and
honestly carried out, though not without such errors
as are inseparable from any works of man. It is
the prediction of one of her wisest Governors, who
has served his country in all the quarters of the
globe, that her natural advantages, combined with
the circumstances of her settlement, cannot fail to
make her in time, without exception, the finest de
pendency of the British Empire.

II.

THE COLONY AS IT IS.

New Zealand differs from all the Australian colo
nies, and from most other countries, in one impor
tant respect which is very puzzling to passing visitors
and often very misleading to those who have an
idea of settling here. It has no capital city of com
manding prominence, nor any metropolitan element
whatsoever. In old lands, the city was the fortified
place, the center of force and wealth, and from it the
conquering people spread sparsely into the country,
only founding other towns when they were so far
from the center that they needed new strongholds,
from which in their turn they spread again and found
ed smaller towns upon some necessity of defense.
In these young countries, where there was nothing
to fear — for even in New Zealand the natives never
seriously threatened the main settlements — the city
was merely the landing-place, where ships could lie
sheltered, boats could be run on the beach, fresh
water could be obtained, and access could be had to
the interior. Now, on the continent of Australia,
spots answering to these conditions are singularly
few, but where they exist in any specially favorable
degree there is found a city, the capital of a colony.
The landing-place of the pioneers was the only land
ing-place, practically, of an immense territory ; and
26

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 27
the collection of huts that were built there by the
pioneers have become the metropolis of that terri
tory. The magnificent cities of Sydney and Mel
bourne, which stand in the eighth rank of the cities
of the Empire, and will soon stand in the seventh,
together with the cities of Adelaide, Brisbane,
Hobart, and Perth, are unmistakably the capitals
of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia,
Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia, re
spectively ; and they overshadow all other towns and
dominate all other localities within the boundaries
of the colony. It was a maxim in the days of the
Roman Empire that " all roads led to Rome," and
the very name of Stamboul, by which alone Con
stantinople is known in the East, is a corruption of
three words which the inhabitants of the Greek Em
pire habitually used when they said they were going
" to town." Not less metropolitan are the chief
cities of the Australian colonies. What every visitor
feels is that Melbourne or Sydney is everything, and
the rest of the country is by comparison nothing ;
and the same may be said of the others with somewhat
less emphasis. This could not be more strikingly
expressed than by the bare fact that the population
of Melbourne and suburbs is one-half the population
of Victoria, the population of Sydney and suburbs
more than one-third of the population of New South
Wales, and the population of Adelaide more than
one-fourth of the population of South Australia.
Now, there is nothing at all like this in New Zea
land ; the largest city in the colony does not contain
more than a tenth of the whole population ; and a

28 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
glance at the map shows why. The natural features
of the country are such that it is necessarily divided
into -separate settlements which, but that they are
all under one government, might be taken for sep
arate colonies ; and each of these has its capital
town at the landing-place of the pioneers of that
particular settlement. Nature divided the islands
into at least nine more or less distinct parts, and at
the same time provided each part with a suitable
place for a center of colonization and trade. The
natives from time immemorial observed this arrange-
ment as closely as was compatible with their habits
of life ; and the Europeans show no inclination to
abandon it, long after they have obtained greatly
improved means of communication among the vari
ous parts of the colony. Thus we find four small
cities, situated on or near the four principal harbors :
Auckland, with 60,000 inhabitants ; Wellington, with
30,000 ; Christchurch, with 30,000 ; and Dunedin, with
40,000 ; and in addition to these, smaller cities or
towns at points on the coast where the facilities for
landing or settlement were less, Napier, New Plym
outh, Nelson, and Invercargill, each with from 2000
to 10,000 inhabitants, and a host of still smaller
towns and villages, with a population varying from
2000 down to 100, scattered pretty evenly along the
main lines of communication near the sea, and
diminishing in number and importance toward the
mountainous interior. The result of this singular
dispersion of settlement is that, while there are no
splendid cities, it is impossible to go any consider
able distance in the habitable parts of New Zealand

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 29
-without coming upon population, living in moderate
comfort and supplied with all of the necessaries,
most of the conveniences, and some of the refine
ments of civilized society. The towns differ very
little from English towns, except in being newer and
more spacious for the population. The mode of life
of the people is practically the same, except that the
extremes of wealth and poverty are less marked or,
indeed, but little known, and class distinctions are
comparatively little observed. In the country, the
decencies of life are universal, and even where the
people are poor, and from the nature of their occu
pation have to live roughly, they will almost invari
ably be found respectable, courteous, and hospitable
up to the limit of their means. There is no violence
anywhere in New Zealand, and very little brutality
or coarseness. Domestic institutions are everywhere
firmly established and highly valued, and there is no
part of the colony where a woman or a child may
not safely venture, with the certainty of being well
treated. More than half of the European popula
tion, 300,000, are born in the colony. Of the
remainder, 125,000 are English, 54,000 Scottish,
51,000 Irish, 17,000 Australian, 6000 Welsh, Cana
dian, or otherwise British, and 13,000 foreign, mostly
Germans and Scandinavians. The Chinese popula
tion number 4500 and are diminishing. Five-sixths
of the people are Protestants, and the remaining
sixth are Roman Catholics, with a few Jews, and
4500 Chinese Buddhists. By far the greater pro
portion of the working population are engaged in
agriculture, or some out-of-door pursuits, but the

30 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
proportion engaged in manufactures, especially those
connected with agriculture and pastoral products,
already reaches a considerable number, and is rapidly
increasing. The miners number 2g,ooo, about 4
per cent, of the whole population.
It speaks well for the general condition of the
people that very few women do any labor. Out of
266,000 European females in the colony, no fewer
than 250,000 are engaged in domestic duties, the re
maining 16,000 being mostly teachers, dressmakers,
shopkeepers, or shop-assistants. It is exceedingly
uncommon for women to work in the fields, and fe
male miners are unknown. The great mass of the
people are educated, only 9000 above the age of
ten years being unable to read and write. Almost all
the adults among these are from abroad. Practi
cally speaking, no children grow up in ignorance in
the colony ; but the whole population are provided
with at least the rudiments of a liberal education at
the public cost. The result of this is strikingly
shown in the diminution of crime. There are ac
tually fewer convictions now than there were twenty
years ago, with less than a third of the present popula
tion, and of the criminals not one in ten is a born col
onist, though more than half the population are born
colonists. There is every prospect of the colony
becoming almost entirely free from crime in the
course of another generation, provided no exten
sive immigration of an inferior class of people from
old countries takes place. Religion is everywhere
respected in New Zealand, without any distinction
of creeds, and though outward observances are less

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 31
strictly adhered to than in old countries, no in
telligent observer can travel in the colony without
being struck by the universal prevalence of the in
fluence of religion upon the morals, the manners,
and even the politics of the people. There is no
State church, or anything at all analogous to it ;
but there is not a village without its church or
churches, and the clergy of all denominations are
men of great influence. They are the leaders of
the people in all good works, and they constitute an
active and highly beneficial social element. There
is probably no country in the world less priest-ridden
than New Zealand. Yet there is certainly none
where religion is more honored in practice, or where
the ministers of religion are more beloved or more
powerful within their proper sphere. To speak ill,
or even slightingly, of religion, is deemed out of
place, even among the rougher class of colonists,
and to do so offensively in public would be deemed
an outrage. Yet there is perfect liberty of belief,
and of expression of opinion ; so much so that the
Free-thought and other ostensibly anti-religious as
sociations, meeting with no antagonism, have for the
most part dwindled away, and been assimilated by
the various religious denominations. The only peo
ple who are persecuted at all in New Zealand are
the Chinese, and these not on account of their re
ligion, which is a lofty system of philosophy, with a
quite inoffensive cult, but on account of the popular
belief that their immense industry and habits of par
simony are apt to render them irresistible competi
tors for the wages of labor if they should come here

32 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
in large numbers. It is safe to say, however, that
the Chinese are better treated in New Zealand than
in any other colony in Australasia.
The dwellings of the colonists are comfortable and
commodious on a moderate scale, according to the
circumstances of the householders. In the cities,
brick and stone are used for public and commercial
buildings, but wood still largely prevails for private
houses, and is likely to do so for many years to come.
There are several reasons for this. The first is that,
in a truly temperate climate like that of New Zea
land, wood is the most suitable building material, be
cause there is no great heat or cold to be guarded
against. It is also the cheapest, both as to construc
tion and as to repairs, in a countfy where labor is
very costly. The commonest form of dwelling is a
bungalow-shaped house on one floor, or a gabled
house of two floors, containing from four to eight or
ten rooms, strongly built of timber, with lath and
plaster, or match lining inside, and roofed with cor
rugated iron. Slate roofs are very uncommon and
tile roofs unknown. Well-built houses of this de
scription, with sash windows, register grates, cooking
range, and all ordinary appliances, ready for occupa
tion, cost from ,£30 to ^50 a room, say .£350 for a
fair-sized eight-roomed house. It is a very common
practice for the colonists of all ranks to buy a plot of
land, from one-sixteenth of an acre to any num
ber of acres, and to build their own house, great
facilities being afforded for this by Building Societies,
who advance the whole or part of the money required
for building the house on the security of the land,

ENGLISH TREES ON THE RIVER MAITAL— NELSON.

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 33
and are repaid by monthly instalments covering in
terest and principal. The interest charged upon
these loans is from 8 to 1 1 per cent., which seems
high ; but the conveniences of the system are such
that it enables vast numbers of settlers to become
their own landlord who would otherwise pay rent all
their life. The possession of a home is an immense
inducement to industry and thrift, and the habit of
saving acquired while paying off the Building Soci
ety's loan is in numberless instances the foundation
of a comfortable independence.
The system of land transfer in New Zealand is
exceedingly simple and inexpensive, so that any one
wishing to buy land can buy as little or as much as
he wants, with a perfectly secure title guaranteed by
the Government, at an outlay of a few shillings for
deeds and registration. About one-eleventh of the
whole population are freeholders ; and in some of the
best-settled districts, the proportion is still greater.
There is nothing, in fact, to prevent any man from
owning his own home, and a good home too, if he
choose to exercise reasonable care and self-denial
for a few years. Nearly every house has some little
land about it, and this, however small, is generally
made into a garden. The cultivation of trees, flow
ers, and vegetables is the favorite resource of the
leisure of all classes, and in most of the towns and
villages the gardens about the dwellings are a
source of pride to the owners and of pleasure to the
passers-by. Inside, the houses are usually substan
tially though plainly furnished, with more regard to
use and comfort than to elegance or display ; and

34 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
except among the poorest class of people, the house
hold effects represent a considerable value, in pro
portion to the station in life of the householder :
from ,£50 or ,£75 in a very small house, up to ,£400
or ,£500 in the larger houses, and much more in
the houses of the wealthy. A remarkable and sug
gestive feature in the furnishing of houses in this
country is the great number of pianos or harmo
niums. There is probably no country in the world,
where a musical instrument worth from ,£10 to ,£40
is so common an accessory of the home, even among
the poorer class. The tables are generally of New
Zealand timber and manufacture, kauri or red pine,
plain or polished, with turned legs, but the chairs
are American oak, or Austrian bentwood, or English
walnut made up in the colony. The commonest
practice, where there is more than one sitting-room,
is to buy a suit of furniture for each room, chairs,
arm-chairs, and sofa alike, in leather, horse-hair,
chintz, or rep, the suit costing when new from ^12 or
,£1 5 to ,£30 or more, according to quality and material.
The sitting-rooms are generally carpeted or supplied
with drugget, oil-cloth, or cocoa-matting, and the
bedrooms are furnished with iron bedsteads, or per
haps wooden stretchers for children, and ample
bedding, with wooden washstand and strong, plain
toilet-ware. The kitchens invariably contain an
oven and generally a cooking range, and have a
liberal supply of cooking utensils of all kinds. The
women of all ranks in New Zealand are accustomed
to perform domestic duties as a matter of course.
The wives and daughters of well-to-do settlers do not

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 35
think housework beneath them, but are respected
and admired for their proficiency in it ; while thou
sands of homes, where there is no servant of any
sort, are, nevertheless, models of cleanliness, order,
and taste.
The people of New Zealand have abundance of
food. Meat and bread are very cheap and very
good. The best white wheaten bread is the univer
sal fare. It is sold at from ^d. to $d. the 4-lb. loaf,
and the bakers are bound under heavy penalties to
give good weight and good quality. Beef, mutton,
and pork, as good as can be got in the world, are
sold at from id. to ^d. or 6d. per lb.; but by taking
part of a carcass, meat, especially mutton, can be had
much more cheaply. Such a thing is unheard of as
for a butcher to sell bad meat, and parts of the
animals, which in old countries are dressed and sold
for food, are here treated as offal. Hams and bacon
are largely eaten. In all country places, the supply
of food, even in the poorest households, is unlimited ;
and even in the cities, and among the poor, there
must be some exceptional reason if there is any stint
of food. Milk and butter are plentiful and good, and
eggs are cheap enough during a great part of the
year. Potatoes are extremely cheap and of the best ;
but green vegetables would be scarce in the towns,
but for the Chinese, who grow them with wonderful
skill and sell them from house to house at a very
moderate price. Fish is not largely eaten, owing to
the abundance of meat ; but it is always to be
obtained anywhere near the sea. Fruit is largely
imported from Australia and the Pacific Islands,

36 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
and is rather dear and not very good. Yet great
quantities of pineapples, bananas, oranges, apples,
pears, peaches, cherries, plums, and other fruits are
consumed ; while small fruits, strawberries, raspber
ries, gooseberries, and currants, grow splendidly in
the colony and are in universal use in their season.
Game is plentiful enough in season, that is, from
April to July ; but is not very much eaten, except in
hotels and the wealthier class of houses, owing to
the trouble of preparing it. Rabbits cost 6d. each in
the shops, and may be got for next to nothing in
the country, all the year round, with a little trouble.
Hares, wild swan, wild duck, pigeons, Californian
quail, and pheasants are supplied in abundance ;
as well as kakas, parrots, pukeko, a large coot, a
most delicious bird, and other native game. Poultry,
turkeys, geese, ducks, and fowls are always to be got,
but, except in the country, do not form a very com
mon article of diet. The daily food of an average
family in New Zealand consists of a good meat
breakfast, with unlimited bread and butter or jam, and
tea or coffee, generally tea ; dinner of a joint of beef
or mutton either boiled or baked in the oven, seldom
roasted, with unlimited bread and potatoes and some
other vegetables, pudding of some kind, fruit, rice
or pastry ; and bread and cheese. Meat tea at six
o'clock is a very common evening meal. Tinned,
bottled, or preserved foods are still very largely
used, though not so largely as in the early days,
when it was difficult to get anything else ; the rea
son again being the saving of trouble in preparation.
This is especially the case among the laboring class.

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 37
It may be said, however, that it is the rule for all
people in this country to eat fresh meat at least once
a day, with bread and butter and tea ad libitum.
There is no national beverage in New Zealand,
unless tea may be called so ; and in a very large
number of houses up to the middling class, no
liquor but water or tea is kept or served at table.
The truth is, all liquors are very dear, and the con
sumption of them is rapidly and steadily diminish
ing. The commonest beverage is colonial beer, a
good, wholesome light ale, brewed in every town of
any size, and usually sold for household consump
tion in casks of from five to eighteen gallons, at
2s. 6d. a gallon, or in bottles at 8^. 6d. per dozen, a
price which would be deemed prohibitive in Eng
land, but which is by no means so here. English
bottled beer is also a favorite drink. Spirits are
very seldom seen at table now, though quite com
monly kept in the house, and drunk with water in
the evening. Scotch whisky is the prevailing
drink. Wine Is not common, except among the
rich, or on special occasions ; though of late years
the Australian wines have come a good deal into
use among people of moderate means. Speaking
generally, it may be said that the colonists drink
little but water or tea in their homes ; and that if
there is a national beverage it is the light ale of the
country, which is far and away the best that is made
in the Southern Hemisphere. There is still a great
deal of drinking in the colony, though nothing like
what there used to be ; but it is done in the public
houses, where every description of liquor, of fairly

38 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
good quality, is to be had for sixpence, a glass of
spirits or wines, a tumbler of English beer, or a pint
of colonial. Liquor of all sorts is the dearest, if
not the worst, article of consumption in the colony,
and for that reason, amongst others, the people are
giving it up both in their homes and out of them.
It is scarcely necessary to say that the wealthiest
classes in New Zealand live almost exactly as they
do elsewhere, as to their dwellings, their furniture,
their food and drink, and all their other domestic
surroundings. The descriptions given above are in
tended only to depict the conditions of life of the
average colonists.
It is very unusual in the colony for more than one
family to live in one house. There is no doubt they
might live much better on the same outlay, if they
were1 content to share a dwelling with a common
kitchen and other conveniences, as is the custom in
many countries. The domestic sentiment, however,
is decidedly against it, and the universal rule, prac
tically, is for each family to have a house to them
selves. Great numbers of people, however, espec
ially single men, live in hotels, boarding-houses, or
lodgings, and have no other home. The hotels in
New .^Zealand are, as a rule, remarkably good, and
not at all dear. In the larger cities many of them
are on a scale of considerable magnificence, with
every sort of comfort and luxury. The ordinary
charge at these is 10s. a day, which covers every
thing except washing and, of course, wine ; or £2 \os.
a week by arrangement. There is a table d'hdte sup
plied with abundance of the best of everythino-. Pri-

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 39
vate rooms and attendance are charged for in addi
tion, but not at all unreasonably. Life at these first-
class hotels is very pleasant ; every sort of attention
and civility is shown to visitors, and the whole tone
of the establishment is as good as could be found
anywhere. In the less pretentious class of hotels,
too, whether in town or country, the accommoda
tion is usually good and cheap ; and the traveller is
often agreeably surprised to find himself in the snug
gest of quarters in parts of the colony where he would
least expect it. The boarding-houses and lodgings
are of every variety, and suited to all purses. The
ordinary lodging-house is a private dwelling-house,
where the family, or perhaps a married couple, or a
widow, take one or more lodgers, and keep them
-very comfortably for from ,£1 to £2 a week. But
there are plenty of highly respectable and well pro-
-vided boarding-houses, where the charge is as low as
T&s. or 14.S. a week. Sixpenny meals for working-men
are a thoroughly established institution. It is not
unusual, even in cheap boarding-houses, for each
lodger to have a separate bedroom ; the practice of
two or more sleeping in one room, which is so com
mon in England and Australia, being far less so in
New Zealand.
The people of New Zealand are, on the whole,
very well clothed. It is a common saying that one
may go from one end of the colony to the other and
not see a man with a patch on his coat ; and it is
literally true that no ragged people of either sex are
to be seen anywhere. Another noticeable thing is
that the people do not dress 10 suit the climate or

4° NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
the colonial surroundings, but have retained the
English style almost unaltered, and even follow the
English fashions pretty closely. No one from home
would notice from the dress of the people that they
were not English. The colonists have never fallen
into the habit of dressing like Robinson Crusoe, or
Paul and Virginia, and the typical colonist, as he is
generally represented in England, with a straw hat
a yard wide, a flannel shirt, open at the breast, and
breeches and boots, is quite an unknown character
here. Gentlepeople, whether in town or country,
dress almost exactly as they do in England, except
that the beltopper hat is comparatively seldom seen,
black, brown, or gray felt hats being the usual wear ;
but most men have a beltopper which they wear on
rare occasions. The same may be said, with little
modification, of all other classes of the people, ex
cept that they have more clothes and better ones
than the corresponding class at home. Corduroy is
not at all common, even among the roughest labor
ers, but strong moleskin is largely used. For their
work, the laboring classes consume great quantities
of slop clothing from England, which is sold very
cheaply all over the country ; but when not at work
they wear good broadcloth or tweed. The cloths
made in the colony are coming rapidly into use, and,
except among the luxurious classes, will soon super
sede the imported kinds. They are not so highly
finished as European fabrics, but are made of pure
wool throughout, and are immensely serviceable, and
very cheap for the quality. Flannel goods and
hosiery made in the colony are also the very best,

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 41
and are largely used by all classes. All other des
criptions of clothing, and women's apparel of every
sort, imported from England, can be got at the shops
in every town, even in the country, at prices very
little in advance of what they cost at home. Boots
and shoes of the lower qualities are made here, and
are good and cheap ; but all the superior kinds are
imported ready made, and are sold at from £i to
,£1 15s. for men's, and 15^. to ,£1 for women's boots
of best quality. There is not the smallest necessity
for anybody coming to New Zealand to bring any
stock of clothing with them. The idea of an " out
fit" for New Zealand belongs to a by-gone period of
the colony's history, or to the " enquiry" column of
the lady's newspapers. Owing to the mildness of
the climate, less clothing is needed here than at
home; but the people do not stint themselves. In
the matter of dress, as of everything else, they live
well ; and at any large gathering of them, where,
perhaps, there are 5000 or 10,000 people, nothing
strikes the visitor more than the total absence of
shabbiness, and the universal equality of comfort in
their attire. They all seem to have new clothes on,
aud to be so accustomed to new clothes that they
think nothing about it, any more than they do of
having plenty of food to eat and a warm bed to
sleep in.
There are no beggars in New Zealand. Begging
is strictly forbidden by law, and if any idle people
venture stealthily to resort to it, the usual and proper
treatment of them is to give them in charge immedi
ately. They generally get a month's imprisonment

42 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
for the first offense, the punishment for habitual
mendicancy extending to twelve months. On the
other hand, casual poverty is amply provided for by
public benevolence ; and, indeed, there are loud and
just complaints that the relief of the destitute upon
such a liberal scale, at the cost of the taxpayers,
whilst it diminishes private charity by depriving it of
its responsibility, encourages dependence and decep
tion among the least self-respecting sections of the
community. It is not too much to say that there
need be no able-bodied destitution in New Zealand
unless through idleness or vice ; whilst unavoidable
cases of distress, if left entirely to private charity,
would be abundantly cared for without any publicity
at all. The destitute sick, or the victims of accident
or sudden illness, are accommodated in the public
hospitals, which are numerous, splendid, and excel
lently managed upon an extravagant scale of expen
diture. Patients are expected to pay a small sum
weekly if they have the means ; but the expectation
is seldom realized, and practically the payment is.
never enforced. Many of the inmates of the hos
pitals are more pensioners than patients, and the
whole system is in keeping with the indulgent and
open-handed habits of the colon)'. The insane are
disposed of under skilled medical attendance in asy
lums which are among the most creditable of the
public institutions. They are treated with the ut
most humanity and solicitude, and are kept under
no restraint beyond what is necessary for their own
well-being. The lunatic asylums, like the hospitals,
are constructed and conducted on a lavish scale, as

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 43
if expense were not to be considered. The farm
system of treatment, by which curable or convales
cent patients are domiciled in a pleasant country
homestead, and engaged in light open-air labor amid
purely rural surroundings, has been introduced with
very satisfactory results. Destitute orphans and
neglected and criminal children are brought up at
the public expense in orphanages, or reformatory
schools, or in religious institutions subsidized for
that purpose. Those of them who do not need a
sterner authority are placed out in settlers' families,
under frequent inspection by trustworthy persons of
position in the neighborhood ; and they not only
lead a happy life, but usually turn out very well, and
are often adopted by their guardians.
It will be gathered from the foregoing description
of the general condition of the people of New Zea
land, that they are a well-to-do people, and they may
truthfully be said to be so, even in the worst times
of commercial depression. The very wealthy class
are exceedingly limited. There is probably not a
single New Zealand colonist with a clear income of
,£50,000 a year, not more than half a dozen with
^"30,000 a year, and not fifty with ,£10,000 a year ;
whereas, in the continental colonies, incomes of
,£200,000 or ,£300,000 a year are not unknown, while
those between ^50,000 and ,£100,000 are numerous,
and those between ,£10,000 and ,£50,000 are com
paratively common. But, on the other hand, there
is in New Zealand practically none of the extreme
poverty wKich jars upon the visitor by its juxtaposi
tion with wealth and extravagance in the great Aus-

44 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
tralian cities, and very little of the hardship and
privation or the contented penury of the poorer
class of Australian country settlers. The people
of New Zealand are very comfortable in a quiet way,
in all classes of life. They do not work very hard,
but their work is well paid. They spend their money
freely, and, as regards most of the things they want,
they get a good deal for it. The wealthy class, or
what pass for the wealthy class in this colony,
have an income to spend of from ,£1000 to ,£5000
a year, and these are numerous in proportion to the
population. Then there are a very large class of
people in what may be called an easy position, who
have from ,£500 to ,£1000 a year to live upon. The
clerical and smaller business people maybe put down
at from ,£200 to ,£500. Finally, the working classes
may be said in general terms to have from ,£100 to
^£200 a year to live upon. There are many skilled
hands in all trades, miners, and others working
for wages, or partly for wages and parti}' for them
selves, who earn considerably over ,£200 a year.
On the other hand, there are many young, weakly,
unskilful, or unfortunate men, dependent on their
labor, who do not earn so much as ;£ioo a year.
But, taking them all round, the working classes in
New Zealand cannot be said to earn on an average
less than £2 a week, whilst a very large proportion
get £2 10s., £3, £3 10s. or £4.. A remarkable
feature of the colony is the early age at which boys
or youths begin to earn their living, and a good liv
ing too. Even the wealthier class of settlers begin
to look out for something for their sons to do at

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 45
about the age of sixteen, whilst in families of less
means it is the rule for the boys to be in some sort
of paid emplhyment before they are seventeen, and
to be self-supporting before they are twenty. Among
the poorer classes the boys go to work at fourteen or
even earlier ; many doing something for themselves
even while they are attending school. Girls also
have no great difficulty in earning from 5.?. to \os. a
week, either in service or at trades, after the age of
sixteen or seventeen. At the same time, child labor,
such as exists in old countries, is scarcely known at
all. The children of all classes of colonists, as a
rule, have nothing to do but play and learn their
lessons, or mind the baby, until they are twelve or
thirteen. Then, however, as soon, that is to say, as
they begin to be a serious expense to their parents,
or to feel the need of money, they begin also to re
alize that money is to be earned, and to earn it.
Thus it is that the people of New Zealand are a
people who have money in their pocket, and who can
afford to live pretty comfortably, to enjoy them
selves in a moderate way, and to possess a degree
of ease and independence which would seem won
derful in an old country.
To put it shortly, the actual production of wealth
is greater in New Zealand, in proportion to the pop
ulation, than that of any other country in the world ;
and as this wealth is probably more evenly shared
amongst all classes of the inhabitants than in any
other country, the result is a high general standard
of living and well-being. Employers complain of
the high rate of wages ; the working-men complain

46 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
that boys earn men's wages ; and housewives com
plain that girls earn so much that it is difficult to
get or to keep servants. But all of this means
simply that the country is an abundant country,
where work is well paid, and there is plenty for all
who choose to earn their share. A signal proof of
this is the extraordinary number of idle people who
do no work, or next to none, but who yet do
very well. It is scarcely credible, but is nevertheless
a fact, that at times there are no fewer than 3000
or 4000 " unemployed," as they are called, sup
ported by the government on relief work. Among
these, no doubt, are a small proportion of helpless
persons, who from sickness, inexperience, or other
misfortune, have got their head under water, and
cannot get it up again. But the mass of them are
the most shiftless, thriftless, and worthless section
of the community. The general well-being of the
people cannot be better illustrated, perhaps, than by
mentioning that these dregs of the laboring popu
lation receive 4.S. a day, which is quite twice as
much as they need to live upon, and complain
loudly that they are shamefully underpaid and cruelly
treated because they are required to go into the
country to work.
The colonists of New Zealand are a holiday-mak
ing people. The working hours are eight hours a
day for adults, and four hours a day, with a half-
holiday on Saturday, for young persons. Sunday
labor is entirely unknown. There are stringent
laws against the overworking of women or boys.
There have even been persistent attempts made to

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 47
get a law passed making it penal to employ men for
more that eight hours a day ; and last year a bill
was introduced in the Legislature and gravely dis
cussed, forbidding shops to be kept open after six
o'clock. Yet, with all this, holidays are very numer
ous. Christmas Day, Boxing Day (26th December),
New Year's Day, the Queen's Birthday, Good Fri
day, Easter Monday, the Prince of Wales' Birthday,
and Anniversary Day are universally recognized as
holidays by all classes. Then St. George's Day,
St. Andrew's Day, and St. Patrick's Day are gov
ernment holidays and bank holidays. But over and
above these recognized holidays, it is the common
practice for a day or two more to be taken at Christ
mas, at the New Year, and at Easter, so as to make
an unbroken holiday of two, three, or four days, in
cluding a Sunday. At these times the great mass
of the people give themselves up wholly to amuse
ment. Horse races, which are exceedingly common
in New Zealand, are fixed for these seasons, as are
also athletic sports, cricket and football matches,
volunteer reviews or camps, agricultural and pastoral
shows, which are very popular, and attended by
great crowds, regattas, boat races, excursions by sea
and land, and all sorts of dramatic and musical en
tertainments in the evening.
The commonest of all forms of holiday amuse
ment, however, are picnics. The different trades
have picnics of their own, such as the butchers, the
bakers, the printers, and so on. So also do friendly
Societies, the Odd-fellows, Foresters, Orangemen,
Hibernian Society and others. At all of these, the

48 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
public are cordially welcomed on payment of a small
sum, half a crown, or less, towards the expenses.
The company often consists of hundreds of men,
women and children, who go out to some public gar
dens, or some pretty place in the bush, or on private
property (by the leave of the owner, which is never
refused), either well provided with things to eat
and drink on their own account, or else accompanied
by caterers, who supply their needs at a fixed charge-
by contract. Arrived at the rendezvous, sports and
games are speedily arranged, and prizes, either of
money or small articles of jewelry, are awarded to
the successful competitors. Others wander where
they will, gathering flowers and ferns, for which the
colonists have an insatiable longing, and with which
they will load themselves on every opportunity ;
swinging under the trees ; dancing on the lawns ;
or playing the universally popular game of kiss-in-
the-ring. It is the rare exception for any intoxicat
ing liquor to be dispensed on these occasions ; and
the whole proceedings are as sober and harmless as
they are merry. The religious denominations are
not behindhand in picnics. The clergy and school
teachers organize children's gatherings on a huge
scale, and on any fine public holidays, the resources
of the Railway Department are taxed to the utmost
to carry the youngsters and their guardians and
friends to the chosen spot. It is amusing to the or-,
dinary railway traveller on such days to see, as he
passes through some pretty country-side, not one
or two, but perhaps a fifty different picnics in full
swing, each numbering scores or hundreds of guests,

mh*

ORCHARDS AND FLOWER-GARDENS, WAIMEA ROAD, NELSON.

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 49
and to learn that they are, respectively, the Church of
England picnic, the Presbyterian picnic, the Wesley-
an picnic, the Baptists' picnic, the Congregationalist
picnic, the St. Patrick's picnic, the Salvation Army's
picnic, and so on.
It is, moreover, very pleasant and very striking to
observe, on these occasions, the invariable evidences
of decent comfort and thorough enjoyment of life
among the thousands of well-fed, well-dressed, , and
well-conditioned people who pour out of the towns
into the country, and out of the villages into the
fields, to spend the whole day in the sunshine and to
find the day all too short for the happiness it. is to
hold. On a nice, warm, tempting Boxing Day or
New Year's Day, an enterprising burglar might walk
through a New Zealand city and help himself un
disturbed to the contents of most of the houses.
Dwellings and streets are alike deserted, and a casual
sojourner, not in the ways of the place, seeks in vain
for anybody to speak to or anything to do. By six
or seven o'clock, however, the streets are lively
enough with returning crowds, and the merrymaking
goes on till bedtime or till the people are too worn
out with exercise and excitement to do anything but
go to bed and dream of the pleasures of the past
day. It is very common to hear of domestic events
or social occurrences assigned to a particular date
by these memorable holidays. " It was after last
Queen's Birthday," or " It was before last Ninth of
November," or, " I haven't seen you since last Box
ing Day," or, " I remember it well, because it was
Anniversary Day before last."

50 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
These out-of-door amusements or gatherings, in
fact, go a long way to make up the social life of a
people who live in a climate where the open air is
always pleasant and healthful ; and it was a shrewd
observation of a distinguished visitor to the colony,
as well as more truthful than most- epigrams, that
" New Zealand people are like cattle. You only
have to turn a number of them into a grass paddock
and leave them alone, and they will make themselves
perfectly happy."
It has been objected by many writers that the
free, open-handed, independent sort of life in New
Zealand destroys all reverence or respect ; that Jack
is as good as his master ; that juniors pay no defer
ence to elders ; and that, generally, liberty tends to
run into license, and the bonds of a well-ordered
society are apt to be loosened. This undoubtedly
appears to be the case to persons newly arrived from
an old country and accustomed to the more ceremo
nious forms and the stricter domestic discipline of an
ancient state of society. But a greater familiarity with
the colony and a closer insight into the character
of the people will show that it is only in appear
ance. As regards the demeanor of the adult popu
lation, it may be said that there is more civility and
less servility than in the old country. Jack actu
ally is as good as his master, as concerns some of
the most important qualifications of a settler, and
there is a natural repugnance to anything like pa
tronage from one class to another, where all classes
have so much in common and are really equal on so
many grounds. But this levelling, as it seems, is a

THE COLONY AS IT IS.- 51
levelling upwards, rather than a levelling downwards ;-
and it is shown quite as much in the improved self-
respect of the inferiors in social station, as in their
lack of external demonstrations of respect towards
their superiors. The rule in the colony is that,
every man, and especially every woman, is entitled
to be treated civilly and justly ; and any one who
bears this rule in mind and observes it in his own
conduct and demeanor, will have no cause to com
plain of any disrespect, but will come to find the
prevailing equality very convenient and agreeable.
So again, the alleged want of respect of children
towards their parents is more in appearance than
in reality. Children in the colony are at once more
companions of their parents than at home, and more
independent of them. They learn from a very early
age to think for themselves and to do a great many
things for themselves which their parents would do
for them in old countries, and in multitudes of in
stances in the present stage of the colony they have
had advantages which their parents had not, and are
actually superior to them both physically and men
tally. It is quite a common thing to see the sons of
laboring people or trades-people, in the professions
or in quite a prominent position, while the daugh
ters are married to men in the position, not of their
parents, but of their brothers. The same holds
good in a greater or less degree throughout colonial
society. The young people start from the point
which their parents have only reached when ad-
, vanced in life ; and are full of self-confidence and
under little parental control. Yet they do not love

52 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
their parents less than children at Home do, and are
not less dutiful to them in the essentials of filial
piety. If should be said that in all ways, there is
less emotional demonstrativeness in the colony than
in an old country ; for the reason that the active
and self-reliant mode of life enlarges the ideas and
dispenses with many causes of sympathy. Those
touching pictures which some painters excel in, of
the son or the daughter leaving home for the first
time, the broken-hearted parents, the weeping grand
mother, the despairing juvenile, the carefully packed
trunk, the last little presents, the servants in tears,
waiting for a last, kiss, — have little or no meaning
for young colonists. They travel about so much,
and see so many changes, and know so much of the
world, that a journey has no terrors for them, but is
only a pleasure. The idea of prolonged separation
is not at all oppressive, because they think nothing
of coming or going a distance which would seem
appalling to youngsters in their own class in old
countries : and in any case, they are always within
a couple or three days' post of their parents. It is
not thought any adventure, for quite little school
boys to travel a hundred miles or more, in a coasting
steamer, or a train or coach, with nobody in charge
of them ; while the whole rural class in New Zealand
are so familiar with horses from their infancy that
they can ride or drive almost anywhere fearlessly.
So, they learn to help themselves, in all sorts of
ways, at an age when children in England are still
quite helpless, or at least in pretty tight leading-
strings. Their parents encourage them to help

J J

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 53
themselves, and are proud of their independence
and intrepidity.
It will easily be understood, therefore, why there
is not the same outward show of reverence for par
ents that there is in old lands, where the parents are
not only the providers, but the rulers, guardians, and
guides of the children almost until they are men and
women. There is, in a word, but little parental dis
cipline in the colony, because there is but little need
for any. As to the prevailing liberty tending to run
into license, there are no evidences of that. Black
guards are blackguards all the world over, and the
children of low, disorderly, disreputable parents are
very likely to be low, disorderly, and disreputable
too. But even this class are steadily and rapidly im
proving in New Zealand : whilst, among the great
mass of the colonists, the rising generation are dis
tinguished by their sobriety, and their freedom from
vice. They undoubtedly have great facilities and
even temptations to be idle, unruly, and vicious ; but
their natural tendency appears to be towards good
conduct and steadiness ; and this tendency is in
creasing with the population born in the colony.
The young of both sexes are very vigorous and
early developed ; and they enjoy great freedom..
But there is no just complaint to be made against
them on the score of morality. It is a remarkable
fact that though the marriage rate is lower in New
Zealand than in any other Australasian colony,
owing probablyto the prolonged commercial depres
sion, the unsettled position of a large number of
families, and the scattered nature of the population.

54 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
there are fewer illegitimate children than in any coun
try of which the statistics are available, and at the
same time there is a larger natural increase. This sig
nifies, of course, that the people are a moral people,
who marry rather late and have large families. It is
unusual for young people to marry until they have
a settled income and a comfortable home ; and the
vicissitudes of the past ten years have shown that this
is no more than prudent, under all the circumstances.
But the decencies of family life are very strictly ob
served in New Zealand, especially among the born
colonists ; and anything like open license is totally
discountenanced by public opinion and social custom.
Enough has now been said about the general con
dition of the inhabitants of New Zealand to give a
fair idea of how they live and what sort of people
they are. It will have been said in vain if it has
conveyed the impression that they are a people liv
ing in great splendor, or rapidly acquiring riches, or
so situated as to be capable of compassing or even
aspiring to any sensational objects of worldly ambi
tion. There is more wealth in one street of Lon
don, Paris, or New York, than all the people of New
Zealand possess. But there is also more poverty
and misery in one street of any one of those great
cities than the people of New Zealand could by any
process be made even to picture to their imagination.
They have been drawn in this book from life, as
they are, — a British people, reproducing under free
and happy auspices the moderate social and domes
tic conditions of the middle strata of a prosperous,
enlightened, progressive, and humane civilization.

THE COLONY AS IT IS. 55
It would not be too much to say of them that they
enjoy more and suffer less, as a community, than
any other civilized people upon earth. The colony
is quite able to maintain ten times as many people
without any material change in their characteristics,
and certainly without any deterioration of their ma
terial welfare. Perhaps it is fortunate for it, how
ever, that its great distance from the chief centres
of European population, serves as a check upon that
miscellaneous emigration to its shores which would
be sure to ensue, if its circumstances were better
known there and if it were more readily accessible.

III.
VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES.
New Zealand was at no very distant geological
period the scene of vast volcanic disturbances, and it
is to these, together with the action of glaciers flowing
from the great mountains upheaved by a succession
of convulsions, that the peculiar formation of the
islands is due. The volcanic energy, in its more
destructive form, however, has been laid to rest for
many ages ; and the marvelous volcanic system that
remains is profoundly interesting to all students
of nature, and incalculably adds to the beauty, rich
ness, and attractiveness of the country. There are
still two active volcanoes in New Zealand, Tongariro,
in the center of the North Island, a majestic moun
tain 8000 feet high, towering above a vast solitude
of elevated plateaux ; and White Island, about 25
miles from the mainland in the Bay of Plenty, on
the East Coast of the North Island. Tongariro is a
sacred mountain of the Maoris, who were strongly
opposed, until lately, to its sanctity being violated by
the foot of any profane person, that is to say, any
pakeha or European, for the Maoris themselves were
too terrified by their superstitious dread of its
supernatural character even to approach it. This
feeling, however, has now passed away, or may be
propitiated by gifts judiciously distributed ; and
56

VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES. 57
the ascent of Tongariro has been successfully made
several times, some ladies being of the party on one
occasion. It is a work of considerable labor, but the
difficulties are not by any means excessive, whilst all
hardships of a serious kind may be entirely avoided
by the exercise of a little forethought and skillful
provision. The beauty and, above all, the strange
ness of the scenery are indescribable.
Near to Tongariro is an extinct volcano of great
magnificence, the snow-covered Ruapehu, in whose
crater, reared thousands of feet above the surround
ing country, is a lake of warm water, which no man
has ever reached, or ever will, in all probability.
That it is a warm lake is only known from the fact
that when, in tempests, great bodies of snow are
carried into it from the surrounding heights, columns
of steam arise, — a phenomenon which has many
times led to rumors, alarming enough to settlers in
the neighborhood, that Ruapehu had again become
active. White Island, seen from a distance at sea, looks
like a long, lofty rock with a cloud hanging over it ;
but, in fact, it is the crater of an immense volcano,
larger than Vesuvius, which has risen from the bot
tom of the ocean, and of which only the cliffs of
scoria overhanging the crater are above water. On
one side there are no cliffs, but only a steep boulder
beach rising to the crater at a very slight elevation
above high-water mark. This is the only landing-
place, and it is only accessible in fine weather and
when the wind is from the sea. The crater con
sists of a mysterious lake of dark-green boiling

58 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
water, intensely impregnated with minerals, chiefly
sulphur. This lake is at almost all times in a state
of agitation ; and it frequently becomes subject to
disturbances of terrific violence, when jets of steam
not less, perhaps, than two thousand feet high are
driven upwards until they are condensed or de
pressed by the cold of the upper air, forming a snow-
white canopy, suspended, as it were, over the island,
and presenting a most curious and beautiful specta
cle. Many observations have been taken of White
Island ; but, like most volcanoes, it varies so much
at different times, that none of them are of much
permanent value. An intrepid naval officer once
had the hardihood to venture out into the boiling
lake on a raft, secured by a rope, to the shore ; but
he was soon overcome by the fumes, and would un
doubtedly have lost his life, if his comrades had not
promptly hauled the rope in and applied restoratives
to the disabled navigator. White Island is a natural
laboratory in which the production of immense
quantity of the purest sulphur is constantly going on.
A company have made great efforts to work this for
commerce ; but the difficulties of landing and ship
ping, and the frequent interruptions from the winds
carrying the fumes from the crater towards the
works, have marred their success. There is a Maori
tradition that White Island is connected by subter
ranean channels with the hot lakes in the interior
of the North Island, and that when White Island
is unusually active, the lakes are simultaneously
disturbed. The geologists, however, declare that
this is a mere delusion, and that, in fact, White

VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES. 59
Island is an entirely isolated volcano,— a striking
monument of the titanic force which, at some earlier
stage of the world's history, played such fantastic
tricks with earth and sea in these romantic regions.
However that may be, there has been recently a
practical proof that there is a connection between
the activity of volcanic mountains and the condition
of hot lakes.
On the 10th of June, 1886, Tarawera, a remark
able flat-topped mountain, which was supposed to
be not only extinct since many ages, but actually
sealed down by what seemed an immovable mass
of rock, suddenly broke out into a stupendous state
of eruption, and never ceased to pour out volumes
of steam and mud and ashes, until a great part of its
own bulk had been dissipated, and the surrounding
country, for more than a hundred miles, had been
covered with ddbris. It then became once more
extinct, or rather dormant, as before, as suddenly as
it had become active ; and it was then found that
the great hot lake Rotomahana had been almost
completely drained. The magnitude of this erup
tion may be judged of by the fact that the noise
was distinctly heard throughout the night, like big
guns fired in rapid succession, at Wellington, 150
miles off, and the town of Taurauga, 60 miles to the
East, was in total darkness for a whole day from the
density of the vapor passing over it from the moun
tain. Yet, it did surprisingly little harm. Three
Europeans and a considerable number of Maoris
were killed by their place of abode being buried in
ashes ; but the only permanent mischief that was

60 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
done was the destruction of some of the rare natu
ral beauties of the locality. Even these, moreover,
were compensated to some extent by the creation of
new wonders, and especially by an entire change of
scene, over a large tract of country. This is the
only volcanic eruption of any violence which has
occurred in New Zealand within the memory of man.
But there are multitudinous signs of the volcanic
past. The island of Rangitoto — " bloody sky " — at the
entrance of Auckland harbor, is considered the most
perfect specimen of an extinct volcano in existence.
It is almost circular, about iooo feet high, symme
trically conical, with two craters at the apex. Its
sides are covered from the summit to the sea with
rude masses of scoria rock, just as they were thrown
from the craters and left to cool, after the last erup
tion. Among these, towards the base, have sprung
up trees and various kinds of vegetation, but it will
probably be many centuries before the mountain
covers its rugged brown nakedness with a smooth
robe of green. There are fishermen's huts on the
more sheltered side of Rangitoto, and there is no
difficulty in landing or in exploring any part of the
mountain. It is a common resort of pleasure par
ties from Auckland, and is well worth a visit. A
few miles inland from the city of Auckland, com
mencing actually in the immediate suburbs, are a
chain of very perfect and very picturesque extinct
volcanoes, truly conical in form, and each retaining
its crater or craters very much as they were left
when activity ceased. But they are clothed to their

MOUNT EGMONT AND FARM LANDS ON THE EDGE OF THE BUSH.
Taranaki, North Island.

VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES. 61
summit with rich turf of the most vivid green, and
are surrounded by lands fertilized to the highest
point as far as the lava flood spread. Upon the
slopes of these once formidable volcanoes are situ
ated some of the most delightful residences in the
colony, and the volcanic soil is wholly occupied by
flourishing pastures and gardens and plantations.
By far the most remarkable and imposing extinct
volcano in New Zealand remains to be mentioned,
the superb Egmont, which forms a distant back
ground to the town qf New Plymouth, the capital
of the fertile province of Taranaki, on the West
coast of the North Island. This splendid mountain
is 10,000 feet high, and rises above the snow-line in
a delicately proportioned cone, its great elevation
being fully realized from the sea, while from inland,
it is somewhat detracted from by the height of the
range of forest-covered hills of which it is the termi
nus. The ascent of Egmont is not particularly diffi
cult. It involves a few days' pic-nicking and a few
nights' camping ; and is often achieved by parties
of friends, including ladies and children.
The highest mountains in the country are the
Southern Alps of the Middle Island, which form a
complete sierra or mountain system extending
irregularly from the extreme North to the extreme
South, and reaching, in various noble peaks, an alti
tude of 7000, 10,000, or 13,000 feet. Mount Cook,
justly named after the great discoverer, is the mon
arch of them all, and is one of the most beautiful
and interesting mountains in the world. Its glacial
surroundings are on a gigantic scale, far grander

62 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
than that of the glaciers of much higher mountains
in other parts of the globe. A well-known member
of the Alpine Club, accompanied by two Swiss
guides, whom he brought with him from Europe,
attempted the ascent of Mount Cook some years
ago.;,. He claims to have reached the summit, but it
is extremely doubtful whether he did so ; and the
great probability is that Mount Cook is still among
the virgin mountains of the world. The establish
ment of the Hermitage at its foot, which is fully de
scribed elsewhere among the Sanatoria, has made it
quite a favorite resort of travelers and holiday-
makers. Among the Australian colonies, and perhaps more
widely, New Zealand has the reputation of being a
land of earthquakes, and it is undecided whether the
Australians have a more exaggerated notion of the
New Zealand earthquakes, or the New Zealanders of
the Australian snakes. The truth is, accident from
snakebite is extremely rare in Australia, and injury
from earthquake is practically unknown in New Zea
land. Correctly speaking, earthquakes do not occur
in New Zealand, and never have occurred within
the historic period. An earthquake proper is a dis
turbance limited to an area of the world's surface
immediately above the center of motion, or not
more distant from it on either side of the center,
than the center itself is from the surface. Outside
of this area, the disturbance is what is distinctively
called in South America a tremblor, and is in actual
fact nothing more than a trembling of the earth, a
reverberation from the shock of a distant earth-

VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES. 63
quake. Upon this definition, there are no earth
quakes in New Zealand, but only tremblores, or
earth tremors ; because the center of motion is not
beneath any part of the islands, but somewhere
away in the ocean depths, at a considerable distance
from the shore. These tremblores, or earth tremors,
nevertheless, are common all over New Zealand,
but, though somewhat alarming to those not familiar
with them, are not really dangerous, and the fear of
them is habitually treated as a joke.
The severest earth tremors ever experienced in
New Zealand were those of the 17th October, 1848,
and the 23d January, 1855. The former was con
fined to a space of about 300 miles, between Banks
Peninsula in the Middle Island, and White Island in
the Bay of Plenty. Masses of bitumen were washed
on shore along the west coast of the North Island
after the shock, showing that the earthquake center
was somewhere at the bottom of the sea. The latter
was less extensive. It was chiefly felt at Wellington,
where it did considerable mischief, and caused some
loss of life from falling chimneys and lightly built
walls. It lasted a minute and a half, and was followed
by a prolonged succession of lighter shocks. The
trembling lasted for some days, and by the time when
it had entirely ceased, it had had the extraordinary
effect of raising the town of Wellington and all the
surrounding country from three to six feet higher
above the level of the sea than they were before.
The persistent tendency of these earth tremors,
great or small, in fact, is to raise the land ; and at
Wellington may be seen at this day a populous

64 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
quarter of the town built on what was a swamp
forty years ago, and a very fine recreation ground,
frequented by thousands of people for cricket, foot
ball, and other sports, occupying a site which was
originally reserved for a dock, with a waterway to
the harbor, which is now a broad street, planted
with an avenue of cypresses, and traversed by a
tramway. The monument to Colonel Wakefield,
the founder of the colony, who died in 1848, before
the first earthquake, consists of a Corinthian temple,
containing a drinking-fountain, overlooking the
pleasure-ground which he himself designed for a
dock. There are many amusing stories told of the ter
rors of the early settlers upon their first sensation of
earth tremors. When that of 1848 occurred, the
settlement was still young and not very firmly
established ; and the news of the California gold
discoveries had rendered the settlers restless. After
the shock, therefore, partly from terror and partly
from discontent, nearly a thousand settlers took ship
for San Francisco, carrying cargoes of sawn timber,
potatoes and other commodities. The Maoris too,
had been very troublesome and were still threaten
ing ; and it is recorded that a sturdy settler at the
Hutt, near Wellington, hearing the rumble and feel
ing the thud of the earth-shock, seized his gun and
fired both barrels through the window at the sup
posed enemy, determined to defend his hearth and
home to the last.
Since 1855 there has been no shock of earthquake
worth special mention, and the sense of insecurity

VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES. 65
has so entirely vanished that even in the towns
where the tremors most prevail, it is the common
practice to build in brick to a height of three, four
or even five stories, while the churches seem to vie
with one another in the height of their spires.
Early in the morning of the ist of September, 1888,
nevertheless, there occurred a most singular dis
turbance, which, until it was explained, somewhat
revived the old fears. It lasted about half a minute,
was distinctly felt all over New Zealand, and was
even recorded by the seismometer at Sydney, 1200
miles to- the west of New Zealand. At Christchurch,
the capital of the Province of Canterbury in the
Middle Island, the stone spire of the Cathedral,
about 200 feet high, was broken off for 26 feet, no
other injury being done. Within a few days it was
ascertained that the chief manifestation of the earth
quake consisted of a slipping or cracking of the
surface in a remote and sparsely inhabited district,
in the interior of the island, about 100 miles from-
Christchurch, where there are hot springs and other
evidences of past volcanic activity. Upon examina
tion, it was clearly shown that the mishap to the
Cathedral spire was attributable to faulty construc
tion, a heavy iron cross, with a cumbrous iron bar
and weight attached, being clamped into stone of
very inferior quality, so that at the slightest shake
the whole structure gave way down to the solid
masonry. These earth-tremors, for some reason which is
unexplained, usually occur at an early hour of the
morning, say between four and eight o'clock, and —

66 NEW ZEALAND AF7'ER FIFTY YEARS.
contrary to the general impression — when the tem
perature is low, and the air calm. They are pre
ceded by a slight rustling or rumbling noise, which
is constantly mistaken for a carriage passing, and
almost at the same moment with the noise there is
felt a quick trembling, very slight at first, and rapidly
increasing to a wave-like shake which makes wooden
houses creak, and sets crockery and lamp-glasses
rattling, and often ends in a shock or thud, as if
there had been a thump or blow from below. The
whole thing seldom lasts more than a few seconds,
and a great many people sleep right through it, and
will not believe, when they get up, that there has
been an earthquake, whilst others, who have been
awakened and gone to sleep again, have a confused
notion of somebody having shaken their bed or
knocked against the adjoining wall. Others are
more or less" gravely alarmed, according to their ner
vous temperament or the state of their conscience ;
and some there are, whom a scarcely perceptible
earth-tremor makes sick for a whole day. The
effect of an earth-tremor on many people is not
unlike the hysterical effect which is often see among
ladies when a mouse runs across the floor. In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the ridiculus
onus is as dangerous as the New Zealand " earth
quake." Practically, there is no danger at all from
earthquakes in New Zealand, and it is quite safe to
say that much greater damage has been done by
earthquakes in Great Britain or France during the
present century than in New Zealand. During a
prolonged sitting of the Colonial Parliament, a

VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES. 67
tedious orator was boring the House into the small
hours of the morning, when a somewhat sharp shock
occurred, accompanied by the usual rattling noise.
The astonished legislator stopped in his torrent of
talk, gazed vacantly round him for a moment, and
then fled precipitately from the chamber. The wag
of the House immediately proposed a vote of thanks
to the earthquake, and the weary members adjourned
amid loud cheers.

IV.
FAUNA AND FLORA.
A chapter on the Fauna of New Zealand might
almost be written with the brevity of the learned
Swede's celebrated chapter on the snakes of Iceland,
"There are no snakes in Iceland." It is one of the
most astonishing and inexplicable facts in nature,
that a country so eminently suited for the support
of every description of animal life capable of exist
ing within its wide range of temperature, should
have been almost entirely void of indigenous ani
mals. .The only mammals New Zealand is believed
to have possessed before the arrival of Captain Cook
in 1769 are the kiore, a small, dark-brown rat with
round ears like a mouse ; and two very small bats,
which are only found in a few localities, and are by
no means common there.
The country may be allowed the bats for its own,
but the overwhelming probability is that the kiore
is merely the progeny of rats brought in the discov
erer's ships, which has somewhat changed its appear
ance from its change of circumstances. It is said to
have been very common at the beginning of the
European settlement ; but it is now seldom seen, the
Norway rat having altogether displaced it in the
neighborhood of man.
The kiore, which is not readily distinguishable,
68

FAUNA AND FLORA. 69
unless by a naturalist, from the common rat, does
not infest houses, though it may sometimes enter
them for food, but is a wild animal living in the
bush and feeding on roots and berries.
There is an extraordinary and quite unexplained
phenomenon connected with the kiore which is
worth mentioning here, in the hope that some natur
alist or other man of science reading this book may
be able to throw some light on it. The kiore, as
has been said, is now a rare animal, very shy and
probably nocturnal. But there are times when it
makes its appearance in vast numbers, coming no
one knows whence and going no one knows whither,
yet evidently governed by some irresistible law of
nature. Three or four years ago such a visitation
of rats occurred on the West Coast of the Middle
Island, a countless swarm of these little creatures
traveling southward along the shore for a distance
of more than 150 miles, all going one way and all
moving as fast as they could, as if impelled by an
inexorable destiny, in spite of all sorts of obstacles.
A large proportion of them died of hunger by the
way, and the' moving host were exposed throughout
their journey to terrible inroads by the acclimatized
brown rat, a much stronger and fiercer animal than
the kiore; just as the revolted Tartars in their
famous flight across Asia in the last century were
pursued and assailed by Cossacks and other fero
cious nomads the whole way from the confines of
Russia to the territory of the Chinese Emperor.
After passing in a ceaseless procession along the
shore for some months, the rats vanished as sud-

70 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
denly and mysteriously as they had appeared ; and
to this day no one has been able to offer even a
plausible theory regarding them. The interior of
that part of the country where they appeared is very
mountainous and secluded, only very scantily ex
plored, in fact, and extremely sparsely inhabited ; and
it is quite possible that there may be great numbers
of kiore in the remote forests or swamps, from which
they were driven temporarily by some unknown
cause. The most incredible fact connected with
this strange migration remains to be stated. From
many observations taken at various points in the
line of march of this grand army, it was ascertained,
apparently beyond dispute, that they consisted solely
of males, not a single female being found among
great numbers of live or dead ones that were exam
ined. Should any reader of this book be able to
explain this curious freak of nature or should know
of any parallel case, any information he could afford
would doubtless be received with thanks, and duly
made public, by Sir James Hector, the learned Di
rector of the New Zealand Institute at Wellington.
If we add to the two little bats and the very dubi
ous kiore, the several kinds of seals which frequent
the southern shores of New Zealand at certain sea
sons, we have already exhausted the whole list of
indigenous mammals. There were absolutely no
other beasts, while the reptiles are confined to the
lizards, the beautiful but insignificant little creatures
about as long as the finger, which are found every
where near the seashore, and the weird tuatara, a
dark-bronze fringed lizard or iguana, from six inches

FAUNA AND FLORA. 71
to a foot in length, which is only found on certain
exposed and rocky islets, totally void of any visible
sustenance, on the coast of the North Island. The
titatara is the very embodiment of a negative exist
ence. It is repulsively ugly, judged by any conven
tional ideas of beauty ; but is perfectly harmless,
and is probably very good to eat for those who have
a stomach for such uncanny fare. Its most remark
able characteristic is, however, its unequaled capacity
of dolce far niente. It is found in its natural habitat
clinging motionless to its rock, perfectly regardless,
apparently, either of the driving spray of the bitter
southerly storm or of the blinding glare of the
northern sun. In short, it has no feelings. It
wants no food or drink, but is quite content to be
kept in a glass case for months or years, even the
want of air seeming to affect its sluggish vitality
very slightly, if at all. It makes no noise, and
moves so seldom and so slowly that many people
have watched a number of htatara in a case until
they were tired, and then have gone away in the
firm conviction that the creatures were stuffed.
Yet, when they have come back next day, they have
found their position altered, and by keeping a
steady gaze on them, have discerned them blinking
their golden eyes, or slightly palpitating their leath
ery sides, or moving their solemn head as slowly
as the minute-hand of a clock. The tuatara is sup
posed to belong to an antediluvian race of animals ;
and from its habits it can well be believed to have
been left behind when the other animals got into the
ark. The Maoris have a superstitious horror of the

72 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
tuatara, and will run away in abject fear if one is
produced. Yet it is absolutely innocuous, having
no weapon of offense or defense, and no energy to
use either if it had it.
In the absence of any more real animals, two
mythical ones may be briefly mentioned. These are
the taniwha and the kaurehe. Both are aquatic or
amphibious in their habits, the taniwha being ap
parently confined to the North Island and the kau
rehe to the Middle Island. The taniwha is a power
ful and bloodthirsty monster, frequenting tapu or
sacred pools or rivers but sometimes met with in the
sea, and devouring persons who profanely violate
the sanctity of its haunts or who have otherwise
offended the gods. Some years ago, a Maori clergy
man of the Church of England on the East Coast
reported to the Government that a beautiful and
beloved young woman, a member of his flock, had
rashly gone to bathe in a tapu pool against his and
her friends' entreaties ; that she had been missing
for some days ; and that then her body had been
found on a rock beside the pool, badly mangled by a
taniwha. There is no English name for the tani
wha, but it may safely be classed under the generic
term of Bogey. The kaurehe has at least a possible
existence. It is supposed to be a kind of large
otter,— as large as a calf, some say, — but the evi
dences of it are far from satisfactory. Several
credible observers have described the trail of some
such animal on the mud or smooth sandy shore of
lakes ; and the late learned Curator of the Canter
bury Museum, Sir Julius von Haast, recorded hav-

FAUNA AND FLORA. 73
ing heard the movement of some such animal by
night when camped beside a lake in Nelson, and
having been robbed of a bundle of fish. Shepherds
and others in the Alpine regions go so far as to
declare that they have seen the kaurehe either lying
on the shore of the lakes or swimming in the water ;
but none of their accounts will bear very close ex
amination. The Maoris firmly believe in the kau
rehe ; but then the Maori mind is so constituted
that belief in the non-existent is at least as easy to
it as belief in the existent. But, if any Europeans
believe in it at all, it is with that faith which is the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen.
Coming now to birds, there is a very different
story to tell. New Zealand was once the abode of
the largest and most marvelous bird in the world,
a bird which actually brings the fabled Roc of Sin-
bad the Sailor within the region of prosaic possi
bility; and which throws the Roc into insignificance
as far as outlandishness is concerned. The Roc was
only a large eagle, large enough to fly away with a
man lashed to one of its claws. But the Moa, the
Gigantic Dinornis of New Zealand, was a wingless
bird standing twelve or fifteen feet high, stalking
about on legs as long and as strong as a camel's,
laying greenish white eggs about a foot in length, and
swallowing handfuls of pebbles to aid its digestion.
This stupendous Apterix is believed to be wholly
extinct ; though there is no positive reason why it
should not yet be found living in some of the
hitherto unexplored and all but inaccessible soli-

74 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
tudes on the southwest coast of the Middle Island.
But its remains are found in immense quantities in
both islands, showing that it was at one time ex
ceedingly common. The museums in New Zealand
contain a great many fine skeletons of the moa, as
well as fragments of the eggs, bones of the chicks,
feathers, and stones from the crop, found in the
skeletons. There is no more puzzling problem, per
haps, than that of the moa. Judging from the
recent appearance of the bones, feathers, and other
relics, which are found either in caves or close to the
surface of the ground, in all sorts of situations, it
might be supposed to have only died out, like the
quail, and other native birds, within the memory of
man. Some old Maoris have been heard to declare
that they hunted and ate the moa in their youth,
Yet the fact that no allusion to the moa has ever
been found in any Maori legend or genealogy, some
of which go back nearly 800 years, — whereas these
records abound in allusions to all other natural ob
jects, — seems to some authorities conclusive against
the bird having existed since a remote antiquity.
That the moa was at one time hunted and eaten in
enormous numbers is proved beyond question by
the evidence of cooked bones found among burnt
stones in ancient ovens, with stone weapons or im
plements. But when that time was, or who the
moa hunters were, are matters beyond the ken of
mortal man, and are subject of the widest divero-ence
of opinion among the savants. This subject is re
ferred to more fully in a subsequent chapter on the
antiquity of the Maori.

FAUNA AND FLORA. 75
There are still in New Zealand in considerable
abundance, however, three birds of the moa kind,
though on a comparatively diminutive scale. These
are the two varieties of kiwi, differing strikingly in
the two Islands ; and the weka, or wood-hen, which
is found everywhere. These three are true apterix,
quite wingless birds, or provided only with rudimen
tary wings not externally visible. The kiwi does
not look like a bird at all. It is about a foot high,
and about the same length. It has a round body
covered with soft plumage resembling brown or dark
gray fur, no tail, not a sign of wings, thick legs, and
three finger-like toes, and a long curved, slender bill,
sensitive to the point, through which it sucks its food
in swamps or shallows. The weka is a more ordinary
looking fowl* of a rich brown color with red eyes,
something like a hen-pheasant, without wings and
•with a very short tail ; but its habits are most peculiar.
It is-the most inquisitive creature living, and, but for
the extraordinary quickness and cunning of its move
ments, would fall an easy prey to all sorts of ene
mies through that feminine failing. It must always
know what is going on, and will even enter boldly
the tent of the encamped traveler, and steal his
goods and chattels as he lies in his blanket. It is
very common, when a coach stops to change horses
at some roadside stable in the unpeopled wilds, to
see three or four of these queer birds emerge from
the surrounding herbage, and gravely and minutely
investigate the proceedings, walking almost under
the horses' heels and surveying the passengers as if
they were old friends, yet ready, at the first hostile

76 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
sign to make themselves scarce as if by magic.
Many a man's life has been saved in the bush, when
starvation seemed inevitable, by a knowledge of the
w'ekds insatiable thirst for knowledge. The plan is
to tie a piece of rag or paper, — the wing of a small
bird best of all, — to the end of a string or switch ;
then to tap with a regular cadence on a log or tree
or stone. Soon is seen a weka, or two, or three,
poking and gliding and popping about, evidently
wondering where on earth the strange noise can
proceed from. The hungry bushman remains con
cealed in the foliage, and goes on tapping until the
weka is close to him. Then he swings the string
or switch with the lure on the end of it, slowly and
regularly at arm's length, holding a stout stick ready
in the other hand. The weka cannot resist this.
It comes boldly up, and, without giving a look or a
thought to the man, stands up and pecks at the
swinging object. The stick descends smartly and
knocks it down, dead or disabled, when, if the trav
eler is wise, he skins it immediately. The weka is
excellent food, but so exceedingly oily as to be
repulsive if not skinned at once after it is killed.
The oil is a very efficacious salve for wounds or
bruises, and is also used for dressing boots to make
them water-tight. It is so penetrating, however, that
it soon destroys the leather, if used often. These
birds are quite peculiar to New Zealand, none at all
like them being found in any other part of the world.
Another very curious bird is the kakapo, or ground
parrot, a large green bird from 12 to 18 inches high,
and bulky for its height, which inhabits caves and

THE KIWI (Apteryx), A WINGLESS BIRD.

FAUNA AHD FLORA. 77
holes in rocks or trees, and either does not fly at all,
or flies heavily for a short distance only, though it
has fully developed wings. It is a nocturnal bird
and very recluse ; but numerous enough where
found, chiefly on the West Coast of the Middle
Island. There are two other ' parrots, the kaka,
a handsome brown bird, with crimson streaks under
the wings, very good to eat ; and the kea, or moun
tain parrot, a greenish brown bird of most eccentric
habits. The kea is a gregarious nocturnal bird,
living in its natural state in colonies in the moun
tain heights, feeding on berries and breeding in
caves or under ledges of rock, without making any
nest, the eggs being hatched in common by the male
and female birds. Since the grass fires and the
spread of stock have destroyed or rendered scarce
its natural food, however, the kea has developed a
carnivorous habit of an unparalleled description. It
descends upon the flocks, and wherever it finds a
sheep in the snow or otherwise disabled from escap
ing, it fastens itself upon its back, and tearing away
the wool, skin and flesh with its powerful beak, it
makes, with an unerring instinct, for the kidney fat,
which it greedily devours, leaving the sheep to die
in agony. During a severe winter, when the keas
have been driven down from the mountains by want
of food, many thousands of sheep have been known
to be destroyed in this manner. The strictly noc
turnal habits of the kea, made it very difficult for the
sheep-farmers to protect their flocks from its rava
ges ; but since its communal system of breeding was
discovered, it has been successfully coped with, and

78 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
is not now considered a serious pest. Both the
kaka and the kea are easily tamed and are very
imitative and amusing pets.
There are two small, long-tailed paroquets, both
with exquisitely vivid green plumage and with a
brilliant scarlet and light red or yellow top-knot,
respectively. In some seasons they are exceedingly
numerous, and play havoc with fruit gardens and
crops ; but ordinarily they haunt the forests some
what sparsely and are seldom seen near dwellings.
The most interesting and familiar bird in the New
Zealand forest is the tui, or parson bird, rather
larger than a blackbird and not unlike it in shape,
but having a most beautiful plumage of burnished
green and black, shot with blue, and a tuft of snow-
white curled feathers on the breast, which bear a
fanciful resemblance to the parson's bands. The tui
is a honey-feeder, and has a most melodious note,
interspersed with a guttural clucking and a kind of
sneezing sound, which are very comical. One of
the greatest charms of the bush is to watch these
birds flying in a bevy about the highest trees, where
honey-bearing flowers abound, or congregating in
the fuchsia bushes beside some babbling stream,
filling the air with their quaint and striking song.
The tui is strictly preserved by the law, under heavy
penalties, and is commonly regarded as the friend
and companion of man. It is easily tamed, and
learns to talk like a starling or jackdaw.
Another very handsome honey-feeder, or feeder
on insects affecting honey-flowers, is the huia, a
large bird whose broad tail-feathers, tipped with

FAUNA AND FLORA. 79
white, are the invariable sign of chieftainship among
the Maoris, worn in the hair or hanging in a bunch
to a staff or weapon.
The white crane, properly speaking a heron, is a
graceful silver-white bird, now very rare. The
Maoris have a proverb, "As seldom as the flight of
the white crane," referring either to its rarity or to
some migratory habit which is not now observable.
The blue heron, frequenting sea shallows and
rocks, and the pukeko, a large blue coot with scarlet
bill and legs, are also notable specimens of waders.
The pukeko, which abounds in swamps, rockets like
a pheasant, and affords excellent sport, besides being
quite equal to pheasant on the table.
The paradise duck, which is really a small goose
of beautiful plumage, the gray duck, shoveler, blue
mountain duck, black and brown teal, and grebe of
several kinds, are the chief water-fowl.
The wood-pigeon is a splendid bird, twice the size
of the domestic pigeon, with a gorgeous plumage of
burnished green shot with pink, scarlet bill and feet,
and a snow-white breast. The cuckoo is a large and
handsome bird of prey, nocturnal and very recluse.
It is doubtful whether it is more than a visitor to
New Zealand, but it certainly breeds here sometimes.
The wattled crow is a curious and interesting bird,
but very uncommon. There are many other varie
ties of wood-birds, but it is unnecessary to describe
them, particularly in a work like this, for they are
seldom seen by visitors to the colony or even by set
tlers, unless they search for them. The nocturnal
habits of many, if not most, New Zealand birds

80 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
give the impression that they are fewer than they
really are. There are several kinds of hawks and
cormorants, some small owls, curlews, plovers, oyster
catchers, dotterell, and wagtails.
Those who wish to study this subject more fully,
having a genuine taste for ornithology, will enjoy a
grand treat in reading Sir Walter Buller's magnifi
cent Birds of New Zealand, one of the finest works
of the kind ever produced.
New Zealand is singularly bare of insects of the
larger kind. There were no wasps or bees, and
butterflies and moths, though fairly numerous, are
somewhat insignificant, and not distinguished by
either size or beauty. The beetles are also few and
small. Mosquitoes and sandflies are the only noxious
insects, and they are not nearly so virulent as in less
temperate climates. The mosquitoes, strangely
enough, seldom trouble any but strangers, and the
sandflies never trouble anybody after dark. Both
mosquitoes and sandflies recede before settlement,
and are scarcely noticeable in the towns. The
cicada, a small kind of locust, and grasshoppers, are
common in some parts, but are not numerous enough
to be destructive. All the insects have diminished
very markedly since the introduction of various
kinds of birds, and some have been got rid of alto
gether. The most remarkable insect peculiar to New
Zealand is the weta, a most formidable-looking crea
ture of the cricket genus, found in dead trees or
sometimes in the earth. It is from an inch to an
inch and a half in length, and has a terrifying aspect,
but is quite harmless. On the whole, the entomolo-

FAUNA AND FLORA. 8r
gist will find little field in New Zealand ; upon which
the settlers may very heartily congratulate them
selves. Blessed is the country which has no insects.
Any notice, however brief, of the insects of New
Zealand, would be imperfect without some account
of the oddest insect in existence, — so odd, in fact,
that if it were not vouched for on unimpeachable au
thority, and explained scientifically, as far as science
can deal with such a case, it would certainly be set
down for a hoax, only fit to be classed with the mer
maid and other ingenious frauds in Barnum's Muse
um at New York. It is not easy to decide whether
it ought to be described under the fauna or the flora
of New Zealand, for it is at least as much vege
table as animal, and, indeed, in its final stage, it is a
vegetable and nothing else. This is the aweto, or
vegetable-caterpillar, called by the naturalists Hipi-
alis virescens. It is a perfect caterpillar in every res
pect, and a remarkably fine one too, growing to a
length, in the largest specimens, of three and a half
inches and the thickness of a finger, but more com
monly to about half or two-thirds of that size. Until
it is full-grown, it appears to conduct itself very
much like any other caterpillar, except that it is
never found anywhere but in the neighborhood of
the rata tree, a gigantic, scarlet flowering myrtle,
and that it habitually buries itself in the ground a
few inches below the surface. Then, when full
grown, it undergoes a miraculous change. For some
inexplicable reason, the spore of a vegetable fungus,
Sphoeria Robertsii, fixes itself on its neck, or between
the head and the first ring of the caterpillar, takes

«2

NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.

root and grows vigorously. The plant is exactly like
a diminutive bulrush, from six to ten inches high,
without leaves and consisting solely of a single stem,
with a dark-brown felt-like head, so familiar in the
bulrushes. This stem penetrates the earth over the
caterpillar and stands up a few inches above the
ground. The root simultaneously grows into the
body of the caterpillar, which it exactly fills in every
part, without altering its form in the slightest degree,
but simply substituting a vegetable substance for an

animal substance. As soon as this process is com
plete, both the caterpillar and the fungus die, and
become dry and hard, but without shriveling at all.
The thing then is a wooden caterpillar, so to speak,
with a wooden bulrush standing up from its neck.
Papier mache, perhaps, would better describe it than
wood. It can be taken out of the ground entire,
without any difficulty, and preserved for any length
of time. Where the aweto is found at all, — always

FA UNA AND FLORA. 83
at the foot of the rata, — it is often found in great
numbers, so that dozens of specimens may be ob
tained at once. The Maoris eat it, in its soft state,
when it is much like marrow in consistency and flavor;
and, when it is dry, they powder it and use it for a
flesh dye in tatoo.
What the purpose of Providence was in creating
such a combination passes human comprehension ;
but it seems quite certain that the caterpillar and
the fungus are made for one another. Hipialis
virescens is never found without Sphoeria Robertsii
growing out of it ; and Sphoeria Robertsii is never
found without Hipialis virescens attached to it.
How the caterpillar propagates its species is a dark
and solemn mystery. In the ordinary course of
insect life, the caterpillar becomes a chrysalis, the
chrysalis becomes a moth, the moth lays eggs, and
the eggs produce more caterpillars, and so the pro
cess goes on indefinitely. But Hipialis virescens
never becomes a chrysalis at all. It always remains
a caterpillar, only it turns into a papier-mache cater
pillar. Where the moth comes from that lays the
eggs out of which Hipialis virescens is hatched,
therefore, is a problem at which science is entirely
at fault. The reader will probably deem his cre
dence somewhat severely taxed by this account of
the vegetable caterpillar ; and he may well be
excused for doing so. The author of this work,
however, gives his assurance that he has had many
fine specimens of the aweto in his. possession ; and
lest it should be thought possible that he may
have been imposed upon, he thinks it worth while

84 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
to refer the skeptical to an admirable description of
the creature, with an accurate drawing by Delamotte,
in the late celebrated naturalist Frank Buckland's
notes to White's Natttral History of Selborne.
In striking contrast to the poverty of the natural
fauna of New Zealand, is the variety and vigor of
the acclimatized life. It seems as if the islands had
been created and reserved for ages for the special
delectation of animals indigenous to the most distant
parts of the earth, for almost all imported creatures
thrive and multiply amazingly. For this reason
severe laws have been passed against the introduc
tion of noxious animals. Acclimatization began with
the first exploration. Tasman never landed in New
Zealand, and he left no animals there ; but Cook put
some pigs ashore, and from these have come the
countless wild swine which are still found in the '
mountains and forests, notwithstanding the cease
less war waged against them by the settlers. Poaka,
pork, was already a favorite food of the natives be
fore the European settlement, and " long pig" was
the name they gave to white men slain for their can
nibal feasts. There has always been a dispute among
naturalists in Europe as to whether the domestic
porker and the wild hog are two distinct species, or
merely one species under different conditions. The
controversy has settled itself in New Zealand, where
the descendants of Captain Cook's pigs are as truly
wild as any in the world, bristling, swift of foot, and
of enormous strength in the forepart from the neces
sary habit of rooting for food. The old boars are
formidable monsters, reaching sometimes five feet in

FA UNA AND FLORA. 85
length, armed with huge tusks as sharp as a knife,
and protected by a shield of bristles and hide and
gristle which a bullet glances off as from a target.
The leanness and roughness of the wild pig gives it
quite a different appearance from the domesticated
variety; and hence a gaunt, ill-shaped, or sorry look
ing pig is everywhere called in derision a " Captain
Cook." The wild pig, nevertheless, though lean, is
not in bad condition, but is excellent to eat. When
caught young and reared in styes, wild pigs soon
become scarcely distinguishable from a coarse breed
of tame ones, and in a generation or two lose all
their wild characteristics. New Zealand is just the
country for swine, the common bracken, which for
merly covered a great part of its surface, the Span
iard, a large, spikey plant with a root like a gigantic
parsnip, and many other plants, affording abundant
food. Captain Cook probably introduced goats as
well as pigs, and these also have completely taken
possession of the mountains and forests, where they
are regarded simply as wild animals. The " Maori "
dog, now extinct, was only an European mongrel.
Red and fallow deer have been turned out in several
localities and have made themselves quite at home
and rapidly increased. Hares and rabbits are ex
tremely numerous, the latter having become a ter
rible pest which has only been partially overcome by
the utmost efforts of the Government and the set
tlers. Stoats and weasels have been established in
order to keep the rabbits down. Pheasants are
numerous in olaces, but are not increasing, while the
attempt to establish partridges and grouse has failed

86 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
from some unknown cause. On the other hand,
curiously enough, while the little native quail has
become extinct, the crested quail of California has
become one of the commonest of all birds, swarming
in remote bush clearings or mountain gullies, and
boldly invading the gardens and parks of the cities.
Sparrows, skylarks, blackbirds, thrushes, linnets, gold
finches, chaffinches, and starlings are as common as
in England. The black swan of Australia frequents
the lakes and marshes near the sea in vast numbers.
The Indian minah, a pied bird of the size and some
what of the ways of the jackdaw, is quite a feature
of some of the towns, especially Wellington.
Great efforts have been made, and large sums of
public and private money have been spent to intro
duce salmon into the New Zealand rivers, but, so far,
the only result has been disappointment. Innumer
able ova have been successfully hatched out ; innum
erable fry have been turned out, and have thriven
amazingly up to a certain stage. But there is not a
single well-authenticated instance of a true salmon
having been caught or seen. What becomes of them
is a mystery ; but the most reasonable belief is that
when they go down to the sea, either the high tem
perature is fatal to them or they meet with some
natural enemy which exterminates them. Certainly
they never come back. They have been brought to
maturity in preserves by artificial means at Christ
church, and have deposited ova which have been
hatched out ; and from the fry thus actually gener
ated in the country, it is hoped a breed of New
Zealand salmon may be established. But even this

FAUNA AND FLORA. 87
is at best an experiment. What makes the failure
with salmon all the more strange is that the success
with trout has been extraordinary. Every descrip
tion of trout that has been taken in hand by the
pisciculturists has done splendidly, and all the rivers,
streams and lakes are becoming stocked with fish
which grow to an incredible size. The strangest
thing of all is that, while the salmon have never been
seen again after going down to the sea, the trout
take freely to salt water, and are greatly improved by
it. The fishermen at Port Chalmers and at the
Shag River in Otago frequently take trout in their
nets, weighing from ten pounds to twenty pounds,
and better fish was never placed on a table. In the
Hutt River near Wellington, a trout was recently
taken in quite fresh water, having in its stomach a
spider crab which is only found in the deep sea.
To those not familiar with the phenomena of
acclimatization, these may seem like fables ; but the
truth is, Nature has many surprises for us, when we
attempt to adapt her creatures to our own circum
stances. Thus, many animals and birds acquire
peculiarities in a new country which would indeed
astonish those accustomed to them in the old. To
begin with, they usually run to a much greater size,
and breed oftener. They also take to strange kinds
of food. Birds deemed graminivorous at home
become insectivorous here, and vice versd. Some
learn the habits of the native species. Skylarks imi
tate the native wagtail, and may often be seen perch
ing on fences or telegraph wires. They sing in the
night time, too, a thing unheard of in the old country,

88 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
and doubtless acquired from the nocturnal habits of
the New Zealand birds. A rural member of the
Legislature, in the course of a most amusing speech
upon the vote for introducing salmon, declared
himself in opposition to the vote on the ground that
his crops had all been devoured by " insectivorous "
birds, and he was convinced that if salmon were
introduced, they would develop into a new and extra-
ferocious species of shark.
Many insects have been introduced, either acci
dentally or by design. The common house-fly is
among the number. It is a remarkable fact that
whilst Australia, only 1200 miles from New Zea
land, is a land of flies, where they are almost as great
a plague as in Egypt, they first reached New Zea
land from England, and are accounted a blessing.
One of the first things that struck Dampier, who vis
ited Australia in 1688, was the habit of the natives of
placing their hands or boughs of trees, to their face,.
as if shading them or making some kind of signal.
This proved to be the gesture still universal among
both races in Australia, for driving away the flies
which cluster every moment like a swarm of bees,
round the eyes and mouth, in the sunshine. The
flies, in fact, while they doubtless serve some pur
pose of Providence in removing putrefaction, impreg
nating plants, or what not, are one of the scourges of
human or animal existence, and seriously detract from
the advantages of the country as a place of residence.
Yet they never came to New Zealand, notwithstand
ing that for a long time communication was very fre
quent between Australia and New Zealand, whilst it

FA UNA AND FLORA. 89
was very rare between Great Britain and New Zea
land. The housefly came out with the emigrant ships,
and, like too many of the emigrants, showed a dispo
sition to hang about the towns and especially about
the public houses. It was soon discovered that the
housefly was a most valuable settler, inasmuch as it
drove away the native blue-bottle or blowfly, which
was a great nuisance with its buzzing and its propen
sity forblowing blankets or food. For some reason
which is not explained, this large, powerful insect
vanished before the comparatively insignificant
housefly, which had none of its bad habits. As soon
as this was observed, the colonists resorted to all
sorts of expedients to spread the houseflies, or carry
them to distant settlements or homesteads. There
is a story still current in Canterbury of one of the
sheep farmers of the mountain district in the south,
filling a bottle with flies which he caught laboriously
on the windows of the club at Christchurch with
the assistance of the waiters, carrying the treasure in
his saddle-bag for eighty miles, and then being seen
galloping over the plain with the bottle at arm's
length, liberating the flies one by one, by raising his
thumb from the mouth of the bottle. That was many
years ago, and the housefly is now thoroughly acclim
atized wherever there are habitations of man ; but it
is nowhere a nuisance, as in Australia; and in remote
parts, the native blue-bottle still holds its ancient
solitary reign.
It is difficult to measure the value of the acquisi
tion of the house-fly, because its good offices are
not altogether perceptible. Another triumph of

90 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
insect acclimatization, however, has been achieved
within the last two years, which is of the most con
spicuous benefit to the colonists. This is the
introduction of the humble or bumble bee. This
beautiful creature was unknown in old New Zealand;
and the consequence was that red clover had to be
resown every year with seed imported from England.
There was no insect in the islands which could im
pregnate the flower. It was well known that in
England the humble bee performs this important
function, and great efforts were made to bring it out,
for many years in vain. It was easy enough to get
plenty of bees in England, and to keep them alive
for a time, but they always died in the tropics or else
in the cold of the South Seas. At length a small
number out of a large shipment reached the colony
alive and were set free in a garden at Christchurch.
Within a single year they had increased enough
to be unmistakably en evidence, and to the delight
of the farmers, it was found that the red clover was
seeding freely. Great crops of self-sown clover
have now been cut, the acclimatized plant, following
the ordinary law of nature, being much finer than
that grown from imported seed. New Zealand
already supplies itself with clover-seed, and, in addi
tion to having permanent clover pastures, will soon
be in a position to export largely to Australia. The
humble bee has spread with extraordinary quickness,
and has created a revolution in the vegetable king
dom, the extent of which is not yet fully known.
It would probably not be too much to say that the
introduction of this single insect is worth a million
sterling to New Zealand.

FAUNA AND FLORA. 91
NEW ZEALAND FLORA.
The wild flowers of New Zealand are not very
numerous or various, but are extremely beautiful and
strikingly peculiar. A careless observer, having no
eyes for nature and unfamiliar with the haunts or
habits of plants, might suppose the country to be
almost flowerless. One of the best known writers
on New Zealand in his day, indeed, declared that it
had no flower equal to an English dog-rose. But
that was so unintelligent a criticism that it has
long since passed into a joke. A country might
have a very fine flora and yet have no flower equal
to a dog-rose in beauty or value, because, for a
wild flower, the dog-rose is of a high order ; but, in
fact, New Zealand has a great wealth of flowers which
not only gratify the senses and fulfil the sweet pur
poses of Providence, in their native state, but are
deemed of the highest scientific importance. The
more conspicuous among them are either quite
unique, or else gigantic and strongly individual of
their kind.
The New Zealand forest presents little of the gor
geous splendor of the tropics. It is always cool and
sober. There is none of that riotous, reeling pro
fusion of color which makes the sylvan scenery of
Central America or the Pacific Islands resemble a
vast kaleidoscope. A great proportion of the flowers
are almost colorless, white or green, or white and
green, or pale yellow. Yet even some of these are
truly magnificent. Such is the Puawananga {Clematis
indivisd), a snow-white clematis, with flowers of eight

92 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
sepals, three or four inches in diameter, and rich,
glossy, dark foliage. This plant is universal through
out the islands, growing to the tops of the loftiest
trees, where it hangs in immense garlands of bloom,
or trailing among scrub or shrubs where it is easily
gathered. The Pikiarero {Clematis hexasepald), is an
other lovely white clematis, growing in the lower
woods or along the banks of rivers, and there is also
a notable yellow clematis, which the French botanist
Raoul strangely miscalled fostida, for it has a delicious
jasmin-like scent, by which it may often be discov
ered from a long distance in the bush.
New Zealand is especially rich in ranunculi, of
which it has about twenty species, including the two
largest and handsomest in the world. These are the
Shepherd's Lily {Ranitnculus Lyalli), and the Kori-
kori {R. insignis). The shepherd's lily, also called
mountain lily and water lily, grows in the Middle Isl
and at an elevation of from iooo to 4000 feet, and
where it is found at all it is generally very plentiful.
It stands from two to four feet high, with a branched
stem carrying perhaps fifty flowers, pure white, with
bright yellow center, four inches in diameter, and
flat, thick, round foliage nearly as large as that of
rhubarb. There are a cream-colored ranunculus
(R. Traversii) and a yellow one (R. Godleyanus)
very similar to and almost as fine as the Shepherd's
Lily. The Korikori is a noble golden flower, a
buttercup, in fact, three or four feet high, with im
mense trusses of blossoms an inch and a half across.
It grows chiefly in the North Island, and the north
ern parts of the Middle Island, where it covers the

CROSSING THE RIVER TEREMAKAU IN A CAGE ON WIRE ROPES.

FAUNA AND FLORA. 93
high mountain sides as soon as the snow disappears
in the spring.
There is a splendid species of clianthus, the scarlet
Kowhai, or Parrot's Bill {Clianthus pitniceus). It
was discovered on the East Coast by Solander, the
celebrated botanist to Captain Cook's expedition,
but it is so rarely seen growing wild that it has been
supposed to be an exotic. In fact, however, it is
found nowhere else in the world but in New Zea
land, where it is now one of the commonest garden
shrubs. It grows to a height of about six feet, and
has rather a drooping habit, giving the appearance
of being weighed down with flowers. The blossom
is pure scarlet, about two inches long and shaped
like a bird's beak, produced in large clusters hanging
under the branches ; and the contrast of scarlet and
green, together with the graceful shape of the
shrub, makes it one of the most beautiful objects
imaginable. The yellow Kowhai {Sophora tetrapterd) is a
laburnum varying in size from a shrub to a forest
tree forty feet high. It has large bunches of yellow
flowers, which have a peculiar elegance, hanging
from slender branchlets under the delicate, light-
green foliage. Amongst other familiar flowering
trees are the Kaikomako {Pennantia corymbosd),
with light-green foliage and masses of white blos
som, giving the appearance at a little distance of the
remains of a heavy snowfall in the midst of the
brightness and gladness of full spring ; and the Ran-
giora, a strange plant from two or three feet to
twenty feet high, with large, flat, darkly veined

•94 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
leaves, quite white on the under side, and immense
bunches of pale yellow flowers, loading the air with
scent. This beautiful shrub springs up everywhere,
after the larger forest growth has been removed, and
in the early summer the hills and dales and banks of
streams in some parts of the country are covered
with it for hundreds of miles at a stretch.
The New Zealand flax {Phormium. tenax), the
commonest swamp plant, and also very common on
the hills in some localities is a gigantic lily, with
double leaves, not unlike those of the common flag-
iris, but from four to eight feet long, growing in
immense stools, with a number of flower-stalks,
from six to twelve feet high, or even more, bearing
a heavy truss of dark-red flowers, with a somewhat
sickly scent. The Toi-toi, another very common
swamp plant, is a flowering grass, closely resembling
the pampas grass of South America, but yellower
in color and far more graceful in habit.
The Chatham Island Lily, so called, is a forget-
me-not {Myosotis giganted) about the size and very
much of the habit of rhubarb, but, instead of the
colorless flowers of rhubarb, it has splendid spikes
of the most brilliant blue flowers, contrasting mag
nificently with the noble, dark-green foliage. It is
found in swampy situations in the Chatham Islands,
500 miles east of New Zealand, but grows freely on
the mainland anywhere near the seashore, and is a
much-favored garden flower.
The most notable and also the most charac
teristic wild flowers of New Zealand remain to be
mentioned. These are the Rata, or crimson myr-

FA UNA AND FLORA. 95
ties. The commonest of them in the south is in
reality a creeper, which, overgrowing forest trees
until it has entirely enveloped them with its own
voracious stems, ends by killing them and displacing
them altogether. After that it stands erect, a hun
dred feet high or more, and becomes itself one of the
largest and most beautiful forest trees. Its flower is
a brilliant crimson, each blossom insignificant in
itself, but produced in such masses that it seems to
set the tree ablaze, and has, in fact, been mistaken
often for the glow of a forest fire. The same plant,
when young, may be found flowering at a few feet
or a few inches from the ground, a beautiful little
shrub, almost exactly like the common myrtle in
leaf, but with bunches of slender crimson flowers, the
anthers predominating over the sepals, instead of the
poetical white flowers of the myrtle of the old world.
There are, in fact, several varieties of the Rata,
some climbers, some erect, some crimson flowering,
some white, but all curious and beautiful. In the
northern part of the North Island the commonest
species is the Pohtakawa or Christmas tree, varying
in size from a shrub to a forest tree, favoring espe
cially the rocky margin of inlets of the sea, where it
grows almost into the tidal water, — a sombre, sage-
green tree, bearing at the end of the branchlets gor
geous tufts of crimson flowers, which are just in their
glory about Christmas time. The first sight of a large
Pohtakawa in full bloom gives a visitor to New Zea
land a novel and startling impression of floral beauty.
There are two native fuchsias, both very inter
esting. The Konini {Fuchsia excorticatd) is a com-

96 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
mon forest tree growing to a height of thirty or
forty feet, but generally much smaller, and most
familiar as a shrub. The flowers are small and
of a dark purple color, shading into green. The
fruit is edible and rather pleasant. Then there is a
creeping fuchsia, a beautiful little climbing plant,
with delicate round leaves, and very pretty light-red
flowers, hanging like bells from slender stalks. The
fruit is very large, looking like little black plums.
It grows freely from seed or cuttings.
It may be said of the native wild flowers of this
strange country generally that they please more by
their outlandish elegance than by their richness of
color ; but certainly the Ratas and the Kowhai are
among the most superb regalia of the vegetable
kingdom. In one of Ruskin's admirable works on
art, he analyzes the floral details of a picture, by one
of the Old Masters, representing our first parents in
Paradise ; and he shows that the flowers, though
resembling no flowers known to botanical science,
are not impossible flowers, and therefore not inartis
tic. They are simply fanciful within the wide limits
of nature, not grotesque in the evil sense of being
against nature. The New Zealand wild flowers
might belong to just such a fanciful Paradise, where
Nature has tried to be as unlike her old-world self
as possible, and has manifested herself in surprisingly
original forms, yet always with the most loyal alle
giance to the reign of law. Alice in Wonderland
saw nothing odder than the New Zealand flora.
The Garden of the Hesperides contained nothing
more beautiful.

FA UNA AND FLORA. 97
The ferns of New Zealand would need a volume
to themselves, to do anything like justice to them in
the eyes of the specialist, or even of the general
student of botany. The colony is par excellence the
land of ferns. They swarm everywhere, even intrud
ing themselves into the cities ; and, except in the
very driest parts, a considerable collection of them
may be made within a few miles of any town. The
West Coast of the Middle Island is the best place
of all for them. There the whole soil of the forest
is clothed with a multitude of varieties of the finest
ferns in the world. But there is hardly any part of
New Zealand where ferns are not to be found in
greater or less profusion, and some of the common
est sorts are the most magnificent. The tree-ferns,
with a rough black stem and a feathery crest of
fronds, reach a height of thirty or forty feet, and are
exceedingly abundant. They often survive the rest
of the forest, and are transplanted and even ex
ported without any difficulty.
There is but one palm in New Zealand, the Nikau,
but it is a very fine one. It has a singular resem
blance to the columns of the ancient Egyptian
architecture, which were no doubt suggested by
palm trees ; and a grove of Nikau, cleared of other
growth, gives the appearance of having been placed
there in rows, artificially. The fronds of the Nikau
are very slender and graceful, though often of im
mense size, and specimens are found in favorable
situations towering to a height of fifty feet. It is a
slow-growing tree, so that the antiquity of these
giants must be very great. The soil is full of the

98 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
seed, and the seedling plants are very elegant. Placed
in vases of water or in boxes of earth, they grow
freely and are unequalled for drawing-room decora
tions or conservatories, especially among masses of
ferns. The Nikau carries its flower on a large, fleshy
stalk, hanging down at the foot of the fronds ; and
the flower is followed by a great bunch of scarlet .
berries. It is confined to the North Island, or, if
there are any in the Middle Island, they are few
and far between.
Very like a palm, yet not a palm at all, is the Ti,
or Cabbage Tree {Cordylinuin), a somewhat numer
ous family of endogenous plants, varying from the
size and habit of a tuft of grass to large trees as
thick as a man's body, with several branches and
great heads of flag-like leaves. The cordylinum is
found all over New Zealand, alike on the bare plains
and in the densest bush. Some of the varieties are
extremely graceful, bearing tall, slender spikes of
fairy-like white flowers, strongly scented, erect from
the middle of the foliage, after the habit of the
aloes and the fourcroya of Central America, to which
they are no doubt closely allied. The commonest
sort, the familiar cabbage tree of the plains and hills
and gardens— so called because the heart of the leaf-
bunches is white and edible, like the heart of a cab
bage — bears huge bunches of white flowers pendant
from the stem, and has a very handsome appearance
when in flower. It gives a most delusive impression
of tropical vegetation, and is very valuable for that
reason in ornamental gardening. It can be trans
planted or propagated from cuttings with equal ease,

SIR JOHN HALL'S HORORATA SHEEP-STATION, CANTERBURY, MIDDLE ISLAND,
Capbage Trees (Cortfyli/ium) in Foreground,

FAUNA AND FLORA. 99
and it grows very quickly, even in the most exposed
situations. Cattle and sheep nibble it greedily, the
pithy wood being sweet and nutritious throughout ;
so that wherever stock are, the cabbage tree is cer
tain to disappear in time. But it is so well estab
lished in public and private gardens and plantations,
that it will probably survive many other now com
mon forms of native vegetation and long remain the
typical New Zealand tree.
It has been shown that acclimatized animals, even
those brought from very distant and very dissimilar
countries, thrive and multiply amazingly in these fer
tile and healthful islands. The same cannot be said,
so far, of acclimatized plants. Even the grasses need
to be constantly renewed, though the acclimatized
seed is taking a stronger and stronger hold as
time advances and the plants adapt themselves
to their natural surroundings. The red clover,
as has been said, in discussing the insects, never
seeded at all until the humble bee was imported.
For the same reason, doubtless, — the absence of
impregnating insects, — the English wild flowers have
failed to establish themselves here. Daisies and
many flowering weeds must be excepted ; but even
such hardy flowers as buttercups are not common ;
while the whole body of meadow, hedge, roadside,
and woodland flowers of the old country are alto
gether wanting. The only one of any importance
that seems to have taken to the soil is the foxglove
{Digitalis); and that only in certain places. The
hyacinths, anemones, cowslips, oxlips, primroses,
violets, meadowsweet, ragged robin, honeysuckle.

ioo NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
and a host of others which sweeten and beautify
every country-side at home, are unknown in a wild
state here, though they are cultivated everywhere in
gardens. Many efforts have been made to spread
them abroad, but in vain. They either do not propa
gate themselves at all, or else they soon dwindle and
die out.
There is hope, however. During last summer
it was found that primroses had seeded themselves
for the first time, and were springing up in abund
ance in Canterbury. This is attributed to the hum
ble bees. A more curious discovery, and one not
easily explained, has been made in the North Island.
In the spring of 1888, that is to say in September or
October, the surveyors of the Wellington and Man-
awatu Railway Company, engaged in cutting tracks
through the virgin forest on the company's land
grant, in preparation for the sale of the land for set
tlement, came upon great patches of the large white
narcissus covering many acres of ground in a locality
where neither man nor beast was known to have ever
intruded. The narcissus is indigenous to the South
of Europe. It is a hardy bulb, which multiplies
itself very quickly under congenial circumstances.
It has often been known to spread in an old deserted
garden in New Zealand, until it occupied the whole
ground to the exclusion of almost everything else.
But it is a viscous plant and is eaten greedily by cat
tle. It is astonishing, therefore, to find it flourish
ing in the remote forest, where there has never been
any habitation, and where, if there had been any, there
would also have been cattle. It is a mystery of the

FAUNA AND FLORA. lor
bush which will probably never be cleared up. But
it bears eloquent, though silent, testimony that the
natural conditions of New Zealand are not in them
selves antagonistic to the European flora. A time
will probably come when the wild flowers of Great
Britain will be as much at home here as the wild
birds are.

V.
THE MAORI PEOPLE.
The origin of races has presented in all parts of
the world a subject of the deepest interest to the
student and a perplexing problem to the philosopher ;
and among the better-known branches of the human
family, there is none, perhaps, whose origin is more
obscure, or at least more disputed, than the Maoris.
It is not even known whether they are the aborigi
nal inhabitants of New Zealand or not. The com
mon belief is that before the Maoris came to these
beautiful islands, they were peopled by a different
race, of whom the Morioris of the Chatham Islands
are the sole surviving remnant. There is, however,
very little difference between the Morioris and the
Maoris, and the probability is that the Morioris are
simply the descendants of some Maori tribe who
settled in the Chatham Islands, or took refuge there
from tribal foes, at a remote period, and in the lapse
of time developed a modified type from local cir
cumstances. Certainly the evidences of the exist
ence of any people antecedent to the Maoris in New
Zealand are either totally absent or else so very
slender as scarcely to suffice to support a scientific
theory. There are found, from time to time, scat
tered over all parts of both islands, the remains of
man's habitation, skeletons, stone implements, cook-

THE MA OR I PE OPL E. 103
ing places, and the bones of birds used for food.
But all these indications may have been left by
ancient tribes of Maoris as well as by a race more
ancient than the Maoris. Some of the stone imple
ments, such as adzes, axes, or chisels, are said to be
of a material not to be found in New Zealand, nor
known to the Maoris of to-day ; and it has hence
been hastily concluded, that these were the imple
ments of the ancient race, and that the date of the
arrival of the Maoris is marked by the introduction
of weapons of jade, the rare and beautiful green
stone still found in small quantities, mostly on the
West Coast of the Middle Island. A little reflec
tion will show, however, that this theory, at all
events, is quite untenable, and that, if it be true that
the older implements are made of materials not to
be found in the country, the more reasonable conclu
sion is that the Maoris brought them from some
other place, and only disused them when they had
discovered and learned how to handle the stones that
lay about them. This latter supposition involves
the belief that before the Maoris there were no hu
man beings in New Zealand, which seems against
nature, considering the pre-eminent suitability of the
islands for human habitation, and also the fact that
all the other islands of the Pacific teemed with
population. One explanation of this seeming anomaly is that,
up to a very recent geological period, New Zea
land was throughout its whole length and breadth
more or less in a state of volcanic disturbance ; and
that it was therefore practically uninhabitable during

104 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
many ages when other islands of the Pacific were
densely peopled. There is not the slightest trace of
there ever having been any animal life in New Zealand
before the Europeans came, except birds, bats, a
doubtful rat, lizards, and a few kinds of insects. By
analogy, therefore, it is not improbable, — in fact it
is exceedingly probable, — that there was no human
life there before the Maoris came.
Before the Maoris came. But when did the
Maoris come, where did they come from, and is
there any reason to believe that they ever " came "
at all, any more than the ancient Britons came to
Britain, the Indians to North America, or the Chinese
to China? Upon all these points, there is a great
deal of obscurity and infinite difference of opinion.
The Maoris themselves know very little about them
selves ; and the Europeans have only very scanty
means of learning anything about them except from
themselves. The Maoris had no written language,
and their legendary lore was studiously confined to
the priestly caste, who have , all but passed away.
As for their spoken language, it is practically the
same as that of countries so far apart and so widely
different as Samoa, Tahiti, and Hawaii ; and it is;
moreover, like all primitive languages, subject to
unlimited variation by the imitation of natural
sounds and the adoption of foreign words. The
first words which Captain Cook heard the Maoris
say, — a threat to slaughter the intruders if they came
ashore, — and which he took down phonetically, are
intelligible enough to any Maori scholar at this day.
But during the hundred and twenty years which have

THE MAORI PEOPLE. 105
passed away since then, the Maoris have adopted so
many English words that the younger generations
actually speak as much English as Maori, without
knowing it. Not very much, therefore, is to be
gathered from their language as to their origin, and
still less as to the date of their arrival in New
Zealand. A controversy, which has been briefly alluded to
before in this book, is at this moment in progress in
learned circles at Wellington upon this very subject.
It is so curious, and has so direct a bearing on the
antiquity of the Maoris, that it will scarcely be a
digression to refer to it somewhat more fully here.
There were formerly in New Zealand a race of
gigantic wingless birds, called Dinornis by the
naturalists and Moa by the Maoris at the present
day. These monstrous creatures were something
like ostriches or emus, but stood fourteen or fifteen
feet high, and had legs of such enormous size and
strength that the bones, measuring more than a
yard in length and a foot in circumference, were
taken at first for the remains of some very large
quadruped. These bones are found in surprising
quantities in many parts of the islands, sometimes
in caves, sometimes buried in the ground. In many
instances, the skeleton has been found almost entire,
and there are numerous specimens of the skin, the
feathers, the stones which the bird swallowed as
ostriches do, the eggs, and even the chicks in the
eggs. It seems at first sight as if the Moa has only
passed away a few years ago, destroyed, like other
native birds, by the grass fires of the Pakeha, the

106 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
European. There is, indeed, a belief in many minds
that in the unexplored regions of the West Coast,
flocks of Moas may still be found roaming the
plains or wading in the secluded swamps at the
foot of the glaciers. Now, there are innu
merable ovens, mounds, cave dwellings, or other
such relics of primitive habitation, where cooked
Moa bones are found, either with or without stone
implements or weapons, showing unmistakably
that the inhabitants of New Zealand were formerly
Moa hunters, who killed multitudes of these birds
and feasted upon them in great gatherings, just as
the Maoris feasted later on human flesh, and now
feast on fish or pigs. Hence it was hoped that it
might be ascertained how long the Moa had been
extinct ; or, the antiquity of the Moa remains being
fixed, how long as a minimum the Maoris had been
in the country. Upon this arose the controversy
which is still unfinished. It was contended, on the
one hand, that the Moa must have been extinct for
an immense time, because there is no allusion to it
in any known Maori legend or record of any kind.
The most remarkable of such records, and by far the
most serviceable for historical purposes, are the
genealogies of the tribes, which it was the business
of the priests to keep with the utmost minuteness.
These genealogies, or family histories, contain an
incalculable number and variety of allusions to nat
ural objects of all kinds. Everything in the heavens
above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the
earth, is turned to account for the names, epithets,
or attributes of chiefs or chieftainesses ; and it is

THE MAORI PEOPLE. 107
altogether against reason to suppose that, whereas
every other creature known to the Maoris constantly
occurs by name or allusion in these genealogies, the
mighty Moa, the only large, formidable, or imposing
thing alive, should never once have been alluded to,
if it had been known. Yet there are Maori genealo-
gies going back nearly 900 years, from which it is
contended that the Moa has been extinct for at least.
that length of time, and probably for a much greater
length of time, since even no tradition of it is men
tioned in the most ancient records of a people who-
are extremely tenacious of traditions of every sort.
The opposite contention is in startling conflict with
this. Colonel McDonnell, a great Maori scholar, and
one who, perhaps, is more intimately acquainted with
the Maoris than any other Pakeha since the death
of the celebrated Judge Maning, the original Pakeha-
Maori, has come forward with a most astounding
testimony. He declares that some years ago, upon
this question of the antiquity of Moa bones being
discussed among the Maoris at Wanganui, the old
chief Kawana Paipai, then supposed to be nearly 100
years old, and since dead, affirmed that in his youth
he had seen the Moa and had himself hunted it and
eaten it. He described it as a great brown bird, run
ning very fast and fighting desperately with its feet,
and he said the manner of hunting it was for relays
of Maoris, posted at long distances from each
other, to drive it from one party to another, so
that when one party were tired out, another
party took up the running, and so at length the
exhausted bird was overtaken and slain. Doubt

108 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
being shown as to whether the venerable chief was
not exercising the proverbial privilege of old men to
astonish the weak mind of the youngsters, Kawana
Paipai undertook to direct some of his hearers to
the very spot where he had witnessed a Moa feast ;
and a party going thither, and digging, according to
his instructions, found, sure enough, many Moa
bones and cooking stones, and all the signs of a
plentiful banquet.
This seems conclusive ; but, to those who know
the Maoris, it is very far from being so. It is
much easier to believe that Kawana Paipai was
romancing, repeating stories or speculations which
he had heard from Europeans, and that the scene
of his alleged Moa feast was merely one of num
berless ancient cooking places which have been
discovered and rediscovered over and over again
since the European settlement, than to disbelieve
the negative testimony of the genealogies. It is in
conceivable that, if such creatures as Kawana Paipai
described had existed, or such customs had prevailed,
within the period of Maori tradition, no reference
should have been made to them by the Tohunga,
the priests whose lifelong function it was to observe
such matters and to relate them incessantly for the
very purpose of perpetuating the recollection of
them. Would no young chief have been named
" The Moa Hunter," no swift-footed Achilles have
gained the epithet of " The Runner Down of Moas,"
no stately maiden have been called " Moa-neck,"
no stubborn chief defending himself against over-
whelming odds have received the distinction of one

THE MAORI PEOPLE. 109
who fought like a Moa at bay ? We have innumer
able notices of the pigeon, the parrot, the heron, the
cormorant, the ground lark, the huia — whose white-
tipped feathers are the sign of chieftainship — and of
many less familiar or less noticeable birds ; but none
of the Moa, which, if it had existed in their time,
must have filled the mind of the Maoris more than
any other creature in the country. Kawana Paipai's
story, therefore, is quite incredible ; and it may be
taken for certain that the last Moa was killed and
eaten before the earliest tradition of the Maoris
commenced. This, however, whilst it assigns a
much greater antiquity both to the Maoris and to
the Moa than has been ordinarily assigned to them,
throws no light either on the origin of the Maoris or
on the nationality of the Moa hunters. It merely
tends to deepen the obscurity in which both ques
tions are enveloped.
The ordinarily received tradition among the Maoris
is that, many generations ago, exiles from Hawaiki,
wherever that may be, arrived upon the shore of the
North Island of New Zealand, under the leadership
of a chief or heroic personage of some sort named
Maui (pronounced Mah-oo-ee, or shortly, Mowee),
whence the Maori name of the island, He mca hi no
Maui, " A thing fished from the sea by Maui."
These pioneers, finding the country a pleasant one,
returned to Hawaiki and brought to New Zealand a
large number of their people in a fleet of canoes.
The names of these canoes are preserved in the
Maori legends to this clay, and from them the descent
of the various tribes is traced. It may be all a myth,

no NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
and the "canoes "may simply be a metaphor or
some tribal divisions which have long since passed
out of memory, — just as we speak of the "house of
Israel," "the house of Guelph," and so on.
There are, nevertheless, some circumstances which
give a vague appearance of literal truth to the story
of the migration from Hawaiki. There are certain
trees in New Zealand which the Maoris declare are
not indigenous but were brought in the canoes from
Hawaiki. One of these is the Karaka {Corynocarpus
lesvigata), a beautiful laurel-like tree, bearing edible
fruit, something like a small yellow plum. This tree is
never found in the natural forest, nor at any greater
distance from the site of a Maori settlement, present
or past, than it might easily spread to by self-sowing
or by the agency of birds. Groves of Karaka may
be seen round every Maori village, and wherever any
considerable number of these trees are seen by them
selves, it will be found that the spot was formerly
inhabited by Maoris. The Karaka is regarded by
the natives as a sacred tree, and it was customary
with them to wear wreaths of Karaka leaves when
paying ceremonial devotions at the graves of their
ancestors. A still more remarkable instance of the same
kind is that of the Pomaderris Tainui, so called
by the celebrated botanist, Sir James Hector, who
discovered it in 1878, between the Mokau and
Mohakatina rivers, on the West Coast of the North
Island. In his report of the discovery, which has
been published by the New Zealand Institute, he
says : " The peculiar habit of the tree first attracted

THE MA ORI PEOPLE. Ill
my attention, having resemblance to a clump of apple
trees, so that, at first glance, I thought it to be an
old' orchard or cultivation. I afterwards was much
interested in hearing from the natives that a peculiar
tree was growing on the spot where their ancestors
first camped when they abandoned the Tainui canoe,
in which they came from Hawaiki, and that this tree
had sprung from the rollers or skids, and the green
boughs that were brought as flooring for the great
canoe. On my doubting this, they offered to take
me to the place, and if I could not recognize the tree
as being found elsewhere, in New Zealand, they
would consider it as a proof that the tradition was
correct. To my surprise, they took me to the clump
of trees I had previously observed ; and as it is cer
tainly quite distinct from any plant hitherto described
from New Zealand, the tradition receives a certain
amount of confirmation ; and I need hardly point
out that if it were true, — and we could hereafter
determine the original habitat of this tree, — it might
give us a clue to the whereabouts of the mythical
Hawaiki or the place whence the Maori originally
emigrated to New Zealand." It is an actual fact that
Pomaderris Tainui is unknown in New Zealand,
except upon about an acre of ground on a spur of
the low, sandy hills that extend along the coast of
Mokau, where, according to Maori tradition, the
canoe Tainui came to shore.
It is common to call the Maoris a Malay race, or
a Polynesian race, which may mean anything or
nothing ; while Mr. Edward Tregear, a very learned
ethnologist and philologist, traces them with great

112 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
confidence to an Aryan source, as if they had come
from India, and Judge Fenton, an equally weighty
authority, has no doubt at all that they are of com
mon stock with the ancient Egyptians. A writer in
the Saturday Review once undertook to prove, just
as convincingly, that they are Anglo-Saxons. Un
learned observers, leaving these abstruse questions
to the savants, will probably be of opinion that the
Maoris are a very mixed race. As a rule they are
copper-colored, and of fine stature and physique, as
large on the average as the British, but differently
proportioned, being longer in the back and loins
and shorter -in the legs ; and they. have straight hair.
But some of them are very nearly black, with hair
almost as woolly as negroes,' and thick lips. Others
again, are of a strikingly Jewish or Arab type. Some
times, but rarely, are seen full-blood Maoris not
much darker than the peoples of Southern Europe,
with decidedly red hair. Exaggerated stories have
been told in books of travel of their size. They are
a burly, large-limbed people, and approach the
gigantic in individual instances. Thus, Wahanui,
the great chief of Waikato, a very well-known man
at this day, is a towering figure, weighing twenty-five
stone, and there are many others as large as he.
Even Maori women six feet high are not very un
common. But neither are they common. Tasman
was quite right when, in recording his impressions
of the Maoris on the first discovery of the islands in
1642, he described them as being of about the same
build as Europeans.
It has been remarked as strange that Tasman did

A WAHINE WITH HER PIKANINI.
From Life.

THE MAORI PEOPLE. 113
not notice, what he must have noticed, if he had
seen it, that the Maoris were tattooed. Captain
Cook mentions this specially, as a striking feature
of the Maoris 120 years after Tasman's visit. Tattoo
consists of a carving of the face in a kind of pattern,
which was indelibly dyed in with the juice of the
flax root or some other plant, producing a slaty
blue color. Many of the tattoos are a wonderful
work of art, the whole surface of the face from the
hair to the throat being carved in curves and spirals
as correctly drawn as if with a mathematical instru
ment, scarcely any particle of the original complex
ion being left. These frightful masks, for those are
what they look like, are still to be seen quite com
monly among the older natives, particularly among
the higher chiefs in the North Island ; but tattooing
is rapidly going out of fashion, except as to the dye
ing of the lips and a few mystic strokes or curves on
the chin.
The moral and intellectual character of the Maoris
has been misrepresented as much as their physique.
There can be no doubt that in their natural state, in
which Tasman and Captain Cook found them, they
were ferocious savages, given over wholly to war,
and having scarcely any tendency toward the arts of
peace or any form of civilization. Yet even in these
matters they were a strange mixture. They made
vessels in which a hundred warriors could safely
traverse the stormy waters which surround the
coasts of New Zealand. They built large temples
and houses and stores, which not only showed great
constructive ability, but very considerable artistic

114 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
skill. They dressed flax with a dexterity which has
never been achieved by machinery. They had meth
ods of stone-cutting which are still a mystery to us ;
and having no metals, they made shift with stones
or shells in a manner which seems altogether incred
ible at the present day. The carving of their tem
ples or their war-canoes is a marvel of skill, consid
ering that the material was wood so hard that it
turns the edge of a steel tool. Above all things,
they excelled in the military art. Their fortifica
tions absolutely defied attack by Europeans, even
with artillery ; and their strategy was of a very high
order. Yet they had no bow and arrows, no pot
tery, and none of a score of other conveniences or
contrivances which are to be found among the rud
est races of the Pacific. They were cannibals both
for the sake of food and from the belief that the
courage of the devoured enemy passed with his flesh
into the victor. They were ruthlessly and horribly
cruel. To sever the jugular vein of a captive, and
suck the warm blood till he was dead, was a common
practice within the memory and experience of living
men. Tortures of an indescribable nature were fre
quently resorted to. But the Maoris are not known
to have had any poisoned weapons — which are so
common among some of the islands of the Pacific —
and it is doubtful whether they were acquainted with
poison at all. They were also addicted to sensual
vices in a degree which can scarcely be explained or
believed. Yet they had qualities that counteracted
practices which must otherwise have extinguished
the race.

THE MA ORI PEOPLE. 1 1 5
The Maoris were probably seen at their very
worst when the Europeans arrived at the beginning
of the present century, when the introduction of
firearms had disturbed the balance of power amono-
the tribes, when trade had begun to corrupt their
savage code of honor, and when drink had inflamed
all the worst passions of barbarism. Yet, even in
those terrible times, there were not one, or a few,
but a great many instances, of highly noble conduct
on the part of the Maoris, and it is not too much to
say that Europeans who were brave enough to trust
them and who treated them with humanity and good
faith, had uniformly reason to speak well of them.
In short, as soon as the Maoris met with justice, and
realized that the Europeans were to be trusted, they
began to improve ; and from that time the process
of civilization was very rapid, and on the whole very
complete. No work on the Maoris would deal at all ade
quately with the subject, which should fail to notice
with due appreciation the share which the mission
aries had in the civilization of the country. It may
be said, without any hesitation, that but for the mis
sionaries New Zealand would have been a savage
country to this day, or else the Maori would have
been as extinct as the Moa. It was the missionaries
who enabled the most formidable race of savages in
the world to be civilized without forfeiting their
existence in the process. It should never be forgot
ten that in this memorable work missionary zeal
outstripped the enthusiasm of discovery and the
eagerness of trade. In the year 1796 the ship

116 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
Duff was despatched from the Thames by the
London Missionary Society, with thirty missionaries
for Tahiti, the Marquesas, and Tonga. The Rever
end Samuel Marsden, colonial chaplain at the new
settlement at Sydney, and agent of the London Mis
sionary Society, first drew the attention of the society
to New Zealand in 1809, and in 1814 he went with
three other missionaries, with their wives and fami
lies, and cast in their lot among the heathen. Hav
ing brought with them eight Maoris from Sydney, —
for in those days it was quite a common thing for
the Maoris to visit Australia, — the missionaries gained
a friendly footing on landing ; and on the 22d
December, 1814, Mr. Marsden preached his first ser
mon at the Bay of Islands from Luke ii. 10 : " Be
hold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy." In 1822
the Wesleyan missions were established, and in 1836
Pope Gregory XVI. founded the Roman Catholic
missions in New Zealand which have since done such
good work. It is to these three, the Anglican, Wes
leyan, and Roman Catholic missions, that the civiliz
ation of the Maoris is mainly due.
There are, perhaps, no people in the world more
susceptible of religious influences than the Maoris.
Their only notion of religion, before the missionaries
came, was a degrading and cruel superstition. The
Tohunga, who were oracles and priests in one, domi
nated them more completely than the hierarchy have
dominated the most priest-ridden countries of the
old world. But their influence was all for evil, all
for terror and strife and misery and bloodshed. The
missionaries, preaching the gospel of peace and love,

THE MAORI PEOPLE. 117
and bringing with them a more imposing ritual and
great personal superiority, soon succeeded in discred
iting and displacing the Tohunga. They gained an
enormous influence over the Maoris, and for many
years they were by far the greatest power in the coun
try. It was they who taught the Maoris that there
were other pursuits and nobler pursuits than war, and
higher pleasures than the gratification of the senses,
and who first prevailed on them to take to agricul
ture, to learn to read and write, and to submit them
selves to the salutary restraints of a primitive society.
To William Williams, the first Bishop of Waiapu,
belongs the honor of having translated the first ver
sion of the New Testament into Maori. That prob
ably molded the destiny of the colony more than
any political measure ; for it furnished the first com
mon ground upon which the Maoris and the Euro
peans could live together in amity and sympathy.
In a surprisingly short space of time the mission
aries converted the Maoris from many of their
barbarous ways to civilized usages ; and settlement,
following in due course, found the way already paved
for it by the missionaries. It is impossible to give
any idea of the hardships, the difficulties, the anxi
eties which these good men had to encounter or sus
tain ; but their faith never failed them, and in the
end it was amply justified. They had their reward ;
and even in their own time they received the mes
sage, " Well done, ye good and faithful servants."
The Maoris are estimated to have numbered
about 100,000 at the beginning of the European
settlement, say 1820. They had been vastly dimin-

118 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
ished in numbers by internecine strife, shortly before
that time ; and by their own wars, by wars with the
Europeans, and by contact with alien habits and
customs, they have since been reduced by fully one-
half. They are officially numbered now at 42,000,
and are said to be slightly increasing. t They form
now an integral portion of the community. They
have four members elected by themselves in the
House of Representatives, and have furnished mem
bers to several Ministries. There are also three
highly respected native members of the Legislative
Council ; and native magistrates have jurisdiction
in land disputes. They are still the largest land
owners in the colony, and many of them possess great
wealth and use it well. They are almost entirely an
agricultural and pastoral people, breeding horses,
cattle, sheep, and pigs, and growing corn and other
produce. They have never displayed any aptitude for
trade or manufactures ; but they appear to have now
settled down into a valuable and progressive section
of the rural population of the country, where they are
undoubtedly infinitely better off than they ever were
under their own chiefs and the barbarous rdgime.
What the future of the Maoris may be, no one
can foretell with any confidence ; but there is very
substantial ground for hoping that the threatened
extinction of the race has been averted, and that a
modus vivendi has been arrived at by which the
Maori may live side by side with his Pakeha fellow-
subject and fellow-Christian, with mutual profit and
mutual benefit in other than material ways. It is a
remarkable and very gratifying fact that there is not,

HALF-CASTE GIRLS.
From Life.

THE MAORI PEOPLE.

119

and has never been, between the European colonists
of New Zealand and the Maoris any of that race
hatred or antipathy which exists between the Euro
peans and the natives of India, between the Ameri
cans and the colored people in the United States, or
between the British and the Chinese colonists of
Australasia. Notwithstanding all their past conflicts
and the unsolved problems of the present and future,
there is a great deal of solid respect and liking be
tween the two races of the Queen's subjects in New
Zealand ; and it is the warmest wish of all true
lovers of that charming and lavishly endowed coun
try that the two races may become one in all respects
in which union may be for the benefit of both. It is
believed by those best able to judge that the causes
of the diminution of the numbers of the Maoris have
passed away or are passing away ; and that hence
forward they may hold their own and, growing in
intelligence, in substance, and in adaptability to
changing circumstances, they may become not less
prosperous, happy, or useful, as an important factor
in an advancing civilization, than they are pro
foundly interesting as the survivors of an appalling
barbarism.

MAORI WEAPONS. — MlJRE. — TAIANA. — QUARTER STAFF. — LIVER CUTTER.

VI.
THE WHITE POPULATION.
It seems almost a misnomer to speak of the white
population of New Zealand, because it implies that
there is a black or colored population, whereas there
is none such considerable enough to be placed in
contradistinction from the whites. The country is
virtually peopled by Europeans, the most unmixed
Anglo-Saxon community out of Great Britain. The
English largely predominate over the Scottish and
Irish ; and, by all present appearances, the future
New Zealand type will be simply English without
the local or dialectic distinctions that still exist in
the Mother Country. These people have been
described very fully in their social and domestic-
aspects in an earlier chapter. It is sought here to
convey a clear impression of them in their industrial
aspect. New Zealand, as has already been explained, is
divided naturally into many separate parts, and these
divisions have been made all the more marked by
the diverse manner of settlement. Thus there are
found within the boundaries of this small country
communities having some leading characteristics in
common, but yet having little or nothing to do with
each other, and differing from each other in their
mode of life and their industrial circumstances

THE WHITE POPULATION. 121
almost as much as the people of different States of
Europe do. Climatic and geographical causes have
much to do with this. The far north of New Zea
land, " North of Auckland," as it is often familiarly
called, even in official documents, that great penin
sula stretching from Auckland to the North Cape,
is semi-tropical, and the people are like unto it.
The land for the most part is not suitable for agri
culture, or even for pasturage on a large scale. But
it is admirably adapted for cottage husbandry. It
grows fruit and vegetables in profusion, and can
easily be made to supply a sufficiency of grain and
fodder. Every year it is becoming more evident
that this part of New Zealand is destined to be the
home of a large population pursuing the industries
of the south of Europe, growing olives and oranges
and lemons and grapes, and every sort of semi-trop
ical fruit, rearing silkworms, cultivating flowers for
perfumes, and, in short, reproducing here, under the
most favorable circumstances, the industrial condi
tions of Spain, the south of France, Italy, and the
Levant. The settlers north of Auckland are at
present deemed the most backward in the colony.
Yet their lot is by no means an unhappy one. They
get a very good living with very little labor ; and
any of them who choose to work really hard and
undergo self-denial can speedily acquire indepen
dence and wealth. Land is very cheap, fuel and
water abound ; and all the necessaries of life are
Avithin reach of the poorest, while the mildness of
the climate makes it no hardship to dispense Avith
all but necessaries. A great proportion of the land

122 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
is under forest, and the timber trade is very large
and profitable. The shore is everywhere indented
by the sea, and the traffic is mainly by water. Thus
there is a strong maritime element in the population,
many of the young settlers being splendid sailors
and expert shipbuilders. Large families are the
'rule, nine, ten, twelve children being quite common,
while families of fifteen or even tAventy are not
unknown. A few children more or less, in a house
hold, make no difference there. The boys, as they
grow up, earn their own living, or something more,
Avhile the girls do the housework, or pair off with the
sons of neighbors. It is a remarkable fact, not fully
explained, that more girls than boys are born in the
far North, while the reverse is the case in the South.
The preponderance of females is already very
marked, and will doubtless have much to do with
the development of industries suitable for female
labor. Next in importance to the timber industry is the
flax industry. The flax {Phormium tenax) is a wild
plant growing mostly in sAvamps or moist places, a
gigantic lily with double, sword-like leaves from four
to eight or ten feet long, Avhich consist of an im
mensely strong fibre, covered with a fleshy green
sheath, and containing a clear, viscid gum between
the two blades. The preparation of the flax for
market consists simply in scraping off the green
covering and getting rid of the gum. This is done
by scutching and hackling in a mill. In former
times the Maoris, who used flax for every conceiva
ble textile purpose, did it by hand, the Avomen hold-

THE WHITE POPULATION. 123
ing the leaves on their bare legs and scraping them
with shells. The fibre thus produced Avas wonder
fully fine and strong ; but the labor Avas excessive.
Now, by the use of machinery, great quantities can
be prepared in a very little time. It takes six tons
of green flax to produce one ton of dressed flax ;
so that the labor of cutting and carrying the raw
material is considerable. But the profit is sometimes
very great. It is estimated that when flax is at
^17 per ton in London it just pays to export it from ;
New Zealand. When it is at ^20 it pays well. At
present it is at £¦$> and has been quoted at ^40 ;
and even the tow, that is, the outside and broken
fibre which is scraped off in the process of milling,
is now sent home at a good profit. It has recently
been discovered that the scutchings of flax, the
green covering of the leaves which it is the main
object of the miller to get rid of, with such fibre as
comes away with it, makes excellent fodder for dairy
cattle, giving rich butter all the year round; and
some of the poorer class of farmers in the North are
doing well by combining dairy farming with flax-
milling. It should be said that the flax trade is
decidedly precarious, depending, as it does, on the
price of manilla hemp and other fibres. The very
high price of New Zealand flax, at present, is due to
a failure of the manilla crop, or the Mexican sisal
crop, the flax being in eager demand as a substitute
for manilla or sisal, or an admixture with them, in
rope-making, and so on. The French manufactur
ers, however, have begun to use phormium lately,
quite independently of manilla or sisal, and it has

124 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
also been found very suitable for binding twine for
reaping machines, of which an incalculable and
rapidly increasing quantity is used in various parts
of the Avorld. This industry, therefore, may be
deemed to be permanently in the ascendant, and
destined to furnish employment for multitudes of
people in those parts of New Zealand where it
flourishes. The labor at a flax mill is not particularly hard ;
but it needs steadiness, patience, care, and a certain
degree of skill. A good hand is worth two bad
ones, but no one can tell whether a hand will be
a good or a bad one till he has been tried. Hence,
it is not everybody who can take to this work; but,
on the other hand, those who apply themselves to
it assiduously are well paid. From £1 to £i io.y.
per week, in addition to rations, — that is to say an
ample supply of good food, — has been offered lately
to competent hands ; and probably the rate of wages
may be put down roundly at six or seven shillings
a day with fairly light work. The working day is
always to be understood to mean eight hours.
There are still great tracts of land in New Zealand
covered with flax in its Avild state, flax which must
be cleared off before the land can be used for farm
ing ; and flax land is some of the very best. But,
if the demand for dressed flax continues and ex
pands, the time will soon arrive when flax will be
cultivated. It grows readily from seed or tubers ;
and the leaves are fit to cut the third year. Once
cut, they take three years more, before they are
fit to cut again. The future of the industry is as

THE WHITE POPULATION. 125
uncertain as its past has been checkered ; but all
present indications certainly seem to place it
among the foremost staples of the colony.
Another very important industry, which is quite
peculiar to the far North of New Zealand, is Kauri
^um digging. Kauri gum is the fossil resin of the
Kauri pine {Dammar a Australis), Avhich is found
under the ground on the site of ancient forests.
There is a great extent of gum land, Avhich is mostly
quite worthless for any other purpose, consisting
apparently of clay which has been burnt, the proba
bility being that in past ages vast forests were de
stroyed by fire and the resin melted down into the
ground and became deposited in lumps, wherever it
happened to settle. This process, in fact, may still
be seen going on. The gum fields, though they
have been worked for many years, yield as much as
¦ever, and the supply of gum is practically inexhaust
ible. It is almost exactly the same thing as amber,
which it resembles in appearance so closely that an
•ordinary observer could not tell one from the other ;
but it is more brittle, less beautiful, being clearer
and lighter in color, and much less valuable. It is
¦exported almost exclusively to America, where it is
used in the manufacture of varnish. Gum digging
is the simplest of all industries. It consists literally
of digging in the clay until the lumps of gum are
found, and in separating these from the soil and col
lecting them in heaps for removal. They vary in
size from mere nuts to pieces as large as a man's
body. Anybody who has enough strength to handle
a shovel can dig gum ; and any one Avho chooses to

126 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
work hard can make a very good living at it. There
have been numberless instances of gum diggers
accumulating large sums of money, though living
apparently in the greatest poverty ; and in times of
distress large bodies of workingmen from Auckland
have gone out to the gum fields close to town and
done very well, though they had no experience at
all. When the Minister of Lands Avas on a visit to
the Northern settlements toward the end of 1888, he
saw small settlers there who supplied themselves
with all they wanted in their homes or on their
farms by the sale of gum which they dug in their
spare time. One of these men got seventy pounds
of gum in six hours, which, at 3^. per pound, gave
him 1 js. 6d. for three-quarters of a day's work. The
agricultural settlers as a rule, however, look down
upon gum digging, and, in fact, it has a bad name
which it does not deserve. It is no more degrading
than any other kind of unskilled labor ; but the very
ease with which it is done has attracted to it the
most shiftless and vagabond class of the population,
many of whom are totally unfit for any other sort of
work and Avho take to gum digging as a last re
source in order to obtain food and drink, especially
the latter.
The gum diggers lead a kind of gipsy life,
wandering where they please, and many of them
have no settled dwelling-place, but camp in the open
air or live in tents or rudely built whares or huts.
Among them are often men of good birth and edu
cation, the waifs and strays of English society, and
occasionally a ruined baronet or a broken sprig of

THE WHITE POPULATION. 127
nobility may be found expiating his youthful ex.
cesses on a gum field, and generally setting the
worst possible example of morals and conduct to his
companions. Then there are a large and miscella
neous assortment of mauvais sujets from the colonial
towns, who have sunk from one stage to another
until they have reached gum digging as the pursuit
requiring the least mental effort and involving the
least responsibility. It is needless to say that men
like these do no more work than is necessary to
satisfy their most pressing wants, or that the money
they earn is soon spent. Wherever there is a gum
field supporting a large number of diggers, there is
sure to be a store where the agents of the merchants
buy the gum for cash, or take it in exchange for
supplies, and either at the store or in a shanty close
by, grog is to be obtained. Formerly, a very large
proportion of the proceeds of the gum diggers' labor
passed into the grog shops, and the merchants made
as large a profit by the sale of grog as by the disposal
of gum. A better state of affairs, however, exists now ;
and gum digging is largely pursued on a systematic
scale, the professional gum diggers understanding
their business thoroughly, and knowing both how to
apply their labor to the best advantage and how to
take care of their money when earned.
South of Auckland the country becomes less
romantic, perhaps, but decidedly more civilized.
Farming,, stock-raising, horse-breeding, and sheep-
grazing are carried on largely, together with fruit-
groAving, beekeeping, and all the lesser rural indus
tries ; and a great deal of substantial prosperity and

128 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
comfort preA^ail. The Maori ownership of a large
proportion of this part of New Zealand, however'is
not~~ohly a serious obstacle to settlement, but a
demoralizing influence even among the Europeans.
The Eastern and Southwestern parts of the North
Island, comprising the Provincial Districts of Taran
aki, Hawkes Bay, and Wellington are more advanced
than the North, and colonial life is seen there under
more favorable circumstances at present, although,
as has been noted before, the future may very prob
ably be the heritage of the North. In these parts,
the pastoral industries are carried on with Avonder-
ful success, and so are all sorts of small farming.
Hawkes Bay is a grand sheep country, while the
country on the opposite side of the island carries
immense herds of cattle. It is from these parts that
the frozen meat which has grown into one of the
staple exports of the colony mainly comes.
This trade furnishes one of the most remarkable:
instances of the application of a scientific principle
to commerce. Only seven years ago, the sheep-
farmers in New Zealand did not know what to-
do with their surplus stock. They boiled them
down for tallow or they preserved them in tins.
But there was often very little profit on either
of those processes, and both together failed to-
meet the requirements of the case. Meanwhile,.
the population of the great cities in Great
Britain were in chronic Avant of meat, and espe
cially of mutton. One day it was discovered
that mutton could be sent from New Zealand to
Great Britain in a frozen state Avithout losing any-

THE WHITE POPULATION. 129
thing in quality. The process is in principle this :
Air, at the ordinary natural temperature, is com
pressed to say one-third of its natural bulk by steam
power. It is then let into a chamber with walls
impervious to heat. The sudden expansion of the
air to its natural bulk again, reduces it to one-third
of its former temperature, producing an intense cold
within the chamber; and this process being con
stantly maintained by steam-power, the temperature
Avithin the chamber is permanently kept down to a
point corresponding to the compression of the air.
The carcases of the sheep, ready dressed for sale,
are placed in the chamber, where they are frozen
quite hard and remain entirely unchanged until they
are landed in England. There they are slowly
thawed, and are not only as wholesome, but as pala
table and as agreeable in appearance, as the best
English mutton.
The arrival of the first vessel, a sailing ship, with
a small cargo of frozen mutton in 1881, created a
profound sensation in England, and the most erro
neous and absurd notions were entertained regarding
it. A violent prejudice was created against the
meat, which was declared to be unfit for human food,
and to have lost all its nutriment by being frozen.
The Duke of St. Albans wrote to the Times protest
ing against fresh meat being brought from the Anti
podes to compete with English meat. His Grace,
however, sought to allay the alarm of the English
farmers by assuring them that the thing could not
last, that it was merely one of those unnatural ex
periments which are often attempted but which al-

13° NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
ways fail, and that, even if the supply could be kept
up from NeAv Zealand, which was impossible, the
inferiority of the meat would soon render it unsal
able. The success of the shipment, nevertheless,
was unmistakable, and it was immediately followed
by others. Many mistakes were made at first, and
heavy losses were incurred, especially by the employ
ment of defective machinery on board the ships, and
by exposing the meat too long before it was frozen.
For a time, the trade appeared to be in a precarious
condition, and it looked as if the Duke of St. Albans'
prediction would be verified. The colonists, how
ever, pushed it on with great enterprise, rectified
their mistakes, adopted a variety of improvements,
and very soon found out how to organize the export.
The solution of all their difficulties, in fact, was
found to lie in having freezing works on shore, near
the place of shipment or near a railway leading
to the place of shipment. At Petone, near Welling
ton, from whence the largest export of frozen meat
takes place, a hulk is used for this purpose, moored
to a wharf close to the slaughter-house. The sheep,
which are specially bred and selected for the home
market, are taken from adjoining paddocks in per
fect condition, skillfully slaughtered, skinned and
dressed, and trucked doAvn to the hulk, the whole in
terior of which is a freezing chamber, kept at an even
temperature by a poAverful steam-engine and a com
pressor, as already described. As soon as the hulk
is full, she is towed across the harbor to the wharf
where the vessel for England is lying, perhaps a
mail steamer of 4000 or 5000 tons. The frozen

THE WHITE POPULATION. 131
carcases, each encased in a clean calico bag, are
promptly transferred from the freezing chamber of
the hulk to the freezing chamber of the steamer.
In other cases, no hulk is employed, but the freezing
works consist of a large building with a chamber, and
powerful engines eternally at work. The frozen
carcases are passed through small hatches into
tightly closed vans and carted or railed alongside
the steamer, and at once transferred to her freezing
chamber. The whole of the operations are perfectly
cleanly and inoffensive, the frozen carcases being as
hard as marble and the calico bags as unsoiled as a
lady's muslin dress. In this way a large vessel, call
ing at two or three ports, will take in a cargo of
20,000 or 30,000 carcases in a feAv days, and land
them in London in precisely the same state inAvhich
they left the works.
Innumerable trials have been made by Avhich it is
incontestably proved that the 'most fastidious con
noisseur cannot tell New Zealand frozen mutton
which has been killed two months from English
mutton a Aveek from the daisies, when it comes to
table. The result is that the trade has already ex
panded enormously. The export this year will
probably not be less than a million carcases of mut
ton and lamb, besides a very large quantity of beef.
It may be asked, How about the Duke of St. Al
bans' assurance that the colony could never keep up
the supply? How are the flocks affected by this
enormous drain of a million sheep and lambs a year,
a thing never heard of before in any country in the
world ? The reply is, that the flocks are not at all

132 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
diminished by the export. The colony could not
afford to have them diminished, because it is to them
it looks for its greatest staple of all, its wool. The
effect of the export of meat, however, is not to
diminish the flocks at all, but merely to keep both
the flocks and the pastures up to the highest stand
ard of quality by the regular Avithdrawal of the sur
plus stock. Not only prime wethers, but ewes and
broken -mouthed sheep are worth exporting, and
fetch a remunerative price. Thus there is no over
stocking of pastures, and there are no old, unprofit
able, degenerate flocks. On the other hand, the
certainty of the market for mutton has enabled the
farmers to put into permanent pasture great tracts
of country which they could not afford to deal with
before ; and also to resort largely to turnip feeding ;
by which means they have immensely increased the
carrying capacity of the country. This process can
be extended almost incalculably. In a word, New
Zealand can already send a million sheep a year to
England, as the surplus of her farms, and greatly to
their benefit ; and there is every reason to believe
that within a very feAv years she -will be able to send
two millions a year, and still possess larger flocks
and better flocks than ever.
The meat is sold wholesale in London at about
\\d. per pound ; and at that price, the grower gets
from 12.?. to 14-5-. per head, including what he makes
by the skin and the offal, which pays very well.
It will readily be understood that a trade of this
magnitude employs in all its branches — pasturing,
cultivation, shepherding, slaughtering, freezing, carry-

THE WHITE POPULATION. 133
ing, shipping, fell-mongering, and so on — a very large
population. These are distributed among various
classes of the community, and include the wealthiest
land-owners in the colony, a multitude of smaller
land-owners, or leaseholders, and workingmen of all
sorts and conditions. The actual freezing of the
meat is mostly in the hands of companies who either
buy the stock and freeze them and ship them on
their own account, or freeze for the growers on a
fixed tariff of charges. These companies are all
doing very well, the dividend last year being ten per
cent, in almost all instances, after making ample
reserves. One company, the Gear Company of
Wellington, have paid back sixty per cent, of their
whole capital in dividends in six years from their start,
besides acquiring their land, works, and appliances,
Avhich are of great value. The Wellington Refriger-
ating Company, another important organization at
the capital of New Zealand, are also making great
strides. On the whole, there is no industry in the
colony which is more uniformly flourishing than the
meat industry ; and all the various classes of people
concerned in it may be deemed to be very fortu
nately situated.
Another numerous and thriving class of settlers
are the dairy farmers, whose main source of income
is keeping milch cows for the manufacture of butter
and cheese and dairy-fed bacon and hams. This is
an industry for which New Zealand is peculiarly
well suited by its temperate and equable climate, its
abundant rainfall, and its fertile and wholesome pas
tures. Yet it is only within the last two years that

134 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
the vast capabilities of the industry, systematically
pursued, have been at all adequately realized. There
has for many years past been a large though an
intermittent trade with Australia in butter, cheese,
bacon, and hams ; but it is only quite recently that
the export to Europe has assumed such large pro
portions as practically to revolutionize the whole
industry. What gives NeAv Zealand the advantage
over all other countries is that the cattle do not
require housing in Avinter, and that, Avith little or no
artificial feeding, they are in profit all the year
round. Hence it has been found that a steady
supply of butter, equal in quality to the best Danish,
and in almost unlimited quantity, can be obtained
regardless of seasons. Not less are the capabilities
of the colony for producing cheese, from the cheap
est and plainest varieties up to kinds and qualities
which would satisfy the greatest epicures. In former
times New Zealand cheese was an abomination and
New Zealand butter a by-Avord, while New Zealand
bacon or ham was merely very inferior salt-pork.
This was simply because there was no demand, ex
cept a very indiscriminating and limited local one.
But all that is changed now. There is a constant
demand for all these articles at prices that pay for
skilled labor and large outlay on mechanical appli
ances ; and the better the quality the more profit
able is the product. The result is that dairy farming
has advanced apace, although it is still, no doubt, in
its infancy as to organization and co-operation. The
factory system for cheese, and the mechanical sepa
rator system for butter, are already firmly established,

THE WHITE POPULATION. 135
with excellent results ; and improvements are in
progress at this moment, and are leading to others,
which will assuredly place the business on an en
tirely new footing before very long.
So important is this industry deemed, that the Gov
ernment employ an expert to go through the various
districts where it is carried on, and give the farmers
and their employees instructions in the most ap
proved methods. The colony, moreover, is regularly
visited by agents of the largest European dealers in
dairy produce, who, whilst eagerly competing for the
purchase of the output of the best farms or factories,
are using strenuous and combined efforts to substi
tute the scientific sA'stems of other countries, for the
rude and wasteful processes hitherto in vogue among
the colonists. These agents, who are men of great
experience and special knoAvledge, declare that there
is no country which has such a future before it for
dairy farming as New Zealand, if only the farmers
will give over their old, stick-in-the-mud ways, and
display the same patience, skill, care, and intelli
gence as those with whom they have to compete
elsewhere. As one of these gentlemen well put it
to a group of farmers one day : " God has done nearly
everything for you ; but the little that He has not
done, you really must try to learn how to do for
yourselves." This the New Zealand dairy farmers
and manufacturers are now striving to do, and they
are making very satisfactory progress. In a word,
the whole trade in dairy produce, from the farming
to the shipping, is a totally different thing from what
it was two years ago, or even a year ago ; and still

136 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
only the first steps have been taken towards the
achievement of Avhat it is capable of becoming. A
single steamer for England took 4000 kegs of fresh
butter fit for the table of a prince, from one wharf
last summer, notwithstanding the enormous drain on
the New Zealand dairies during the long and severe
drought in Australia. This seems a huge shipment
now ; but it is probably child's play to what will be
done in the course of a few years. There is a growing
opinion, and a Avise one, in the colony, that it is bad
policy to divert produce from the English trade for
the sake of getting the extravagant prices which are
offered in Australia for short and uncertain periods.
The agents from Home strongly advise the farmers
and manufacturers to lay themselves out patiently
and systematically for establishing a large and steady
trade with England, where they can always rely on
getting a high price for a good sample, and Avhere
the demand will increase and the price become
more certain as the brands become better known
in the market. This trade has already placed a
very large rural population in New Zealand in a
position of comfort. There are large tracts of
country where the people practically live by butter
alone. They own or lease little farms of from 20
acres up to 200 or 300 acres, and the only article
they have to sell is butter, or milk for butter-making.
^ The condition of these people is peculiar. In one
sense they are extremely poor, but in another sense
they are very far from poor. They have no capital,
and scarcely any money. Many amusing stories are
told of their impecuniosity. When they come into

ON THE NELSON CREEK WATER-RACE, WEST COAST GOLDFIELDS.
Middle Island.

THE WHITE POPULATION. 137
town for a holiday, they dissipate on a penny bun
and a draught of the local " swipes," and think they
have had a great time. If they happen to commit a
breach of the police regulations and are fined half-a-
crown, they are often quite unable to pay it, and the
magistrates habitually ask them how long they will
require to earn it, and allow them the time they
name. When a demand is made on them for local
rates, they " take it out " by doing a day's work or
two days' work on the roads. They will do almost
anything except pay cash. The doctors and law
yers and clergy receive their fees from them in
bacon or eggs or firewood or potatoes ; while the
system of barter at the stores is an established
institution. Clothing, which costs money, is the
subject of severe economy, and the whole ward
robe of a small farmer and his family could not
be assessed above a few shillings. The children,
in fact, wear no more clothes than decency de
mands. Yet, when it comes to a question of the
necessaries of life, it will be found that these people
are very well provided. They live in a small, rough
hut, but it is weatherproof and warm. They have a
good vegetable garden, and often a pretty flower
garden as Avell, abundance of fruit, beehives, a potato
patch, pumpkins, plenty of fowls, and probably a pig
or two. They get any number of eels in the nearest
creek, and if near the bush or swamp, eke out their
larder with native game. But, in any case, they can
get as much beef as they want for a penny a pound,
or less, if they choose to take the inferior parts.
All this without trenching on the business part of

138 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
the farm, the dairy, at all. . Thus they are rolling
in wealth, as regards quantity, quality, and even
variety of food. Some little time ago, a deputation
of farmers, from just such a district as is here alluded
to, came to Wellington to try to interest the mer
chants in some sort of organization for the disposal
of their produce. They were fine, big, sunbrowned,
good-natured, open-hearted fellows, and it seemed
ludicrous to hear their complaints of their distressed
condition. One of those to whom they applied for
help in their proposed venture remarked that he did
not think they looked very miserable, for he had
never seen a healthier or jollier set of men, " Oh,"
said one, who was the spokesman of the party,
" there's no lack of food up our way. We have
enough of that to stand a siege. We don't know
what to do with it. But I don't believe we could
raise thirty shillings in ready money in the whole
'settlement, and that's the trouble." They all have a
horse, or two or three ; for horses cost nothing to
buy, or to feed in a rough fashion. It is a much
more difficult matter to get a saddle and bridle.
But the want of a saddle or even a bridle would not
prevent anybody from riding in those parts. Every
body can ride bareback, and a flax halter serves for
a bridle. The horses are as fat and healthy as the
people, though they never get a bite of oats and are
never under shelter in their life. Children swarm,
and blessed are they who have their quiver full of
them, for they all help on the farm, or go out to
work for wages at an early age. Those farmers are
the most comfortably off, indeed, who have a stout

THE WHITE POPULATION. 139
wife and a growing family of boys and girls to look
after the cattle and the dairy and take the produce,
whatever it may be, to market. The joint labor of
such a household is sufficient not only to keep them
selves in plenty, but to make some money besides,
which a man by himself, or a man and his wife, could
not do. Even the poorest of these folks, however,
do not know what want is, or what a headache is.
They lead a narrow and a purposeless life ; but a
fairly happy, and certainly a very harmless, one.
Their condition is strikingly similar, in many respects,
to that of the peasant farmers of Portugal.
The development of the trade in dairy produce
with Europe will greatly improve the position of
these people, by supplying them with cash for their
staple through systematic channels, by encouraging
co-operation in factories, and also by affording an in
ducement to individual exertion in the improvement
of the farms.
A more important class of settlers, whom the trade
in dairy produce is also calculated largely to affect,
are those who are taking up bush country, either
from the Crown or from the Wellington and Mana-
watu Railway Company, and laying it down to grass.
It ma}' be Avorth while to mention here that in New
Zealand "bush" always means forest, and large
forest. Small forest, or the growth that is left after
the large timber has been removed, is called " scrub " ;
but " bush " means, in general parlance, the native
forest in its virgin state, lofty trees with dense under-
groAvth, covering the whole ground. The word
" bush " has quite a different meaning in Australia.

14° NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
There it merely means " the country," and it is often
applied to tracts of open land without any trees on
it at all, or trees so far apart that no clearing is
necessary for the purpose of grazing stock. In New
Zealand such land would be called plains, or downs,
or hills, as the case might be ; and a totally
wrong impression would be conveyed, if it were
spoken of as " bush." The reason of this is plain
enough. The Australian forest is generally open,
the eucalyptus and mimosa having little or no un
dergrowth, thriving far apart, and coming up again
freely after they have been destroyed by fire. The
New Zealand forest is quite different. It is naturally
as thick as it can possibly be, so thick that neither
man nor beast can get through it until tracks are
cut ; and, when once it is cleared, there is an end of
it. The open land is quite open, or merely covered
Avith shrubs ; and the forest land is real jungle.
There are no gradations from one to the other ; but
bush is bush, and no mistake. When, therefore,
bush settlers are spoken of, they are to be under
stood to be those who buy or lease forest land, cov
ered with heavy timber, and clear it for the purpose
of sowing the land with grass for feeding stock, or
growing grain or other crops. This class of
settlement has received an immense impetus lately
through the opening of the country by railways and
the improved price of produce. It affords an almost
unlimited field for energy and enterprise, because not
only is the settler's own labor profitably employed,
but any capital that he may have at command can
also be turned to good account. The first year's op-

THE WHITE POPULATION. 14 1
erations consist entirely of axe-work, bush felling,
that is to say, cutting down the trees preparatory to
burning. Some settlers, who have no money to
spare, do all of this work themselves ; but it is nee:
essarily a very slow and arduous process. Others
make a contract with regular bushmen, of whom
there are plenty to be got at a rate of pay about
equivalent to five shillings per man per day of eight
hours. It is good economy to pay for having the
bush skillfully felled so that it will burn when the
time comes, and not leave the land encumbered with
half-burnt timber. But many small settlers do all
their own clearing, a small space at a time ; and
reap their reward in due course.
The bush being felled, lies in tangled heaps upon
the ground until the hottest and dryest part of the
ensuing summer, when the farmer sets fire to it and
burns as much of it as he possibly can. There is as
much skill in burning as in felling, advantage having
to be taken of wind and weather from day to day,
and of the lay of the land. The profitableness of
the land for a long time afterwards depends on the
success of the first burning ; partly because all the
timber that is not burnt occupies so much space
which is required for grass, and partly because the
ashes of the burnt bush form the seed-bed for the
future pasture and counteract the sourness of soil
which has never seen the sun for ages. The fallen
bush having been burnt, the farm presents a most deso
late and disheartening appearance. Blackened logs
of all shapes and sizes lie scattered among the stumps
of the trees to which they formerly belonged. Here

142 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
and there are seen immense trunks, ioo feet long,
or more, and 10 feet thick, lying prone to earth, or,
perhaps, bridging over gullies or other inequalities
of the ground. Between them are the remains of a
multitude of smaller trees, some lying singly, others
in heaps or groups, just as they happened to fall or
as the fire happened to leave them more or less un-
burnt. The intervening ground is all scorched a
brick-red or covered with ashes of all colors, or
charred wood. The logs and the earth continue to
smoulder for a long time after the burning in chief is
over, and, in fact, do not cease smouldering until the
winter sets in. The whole neighborhood is en
veloped in thick, pungent smoke, and even when
there is no longer much smoke visible at a distance,
the eyes and lungs suffer from it near the logs down
the wind. Not a particle of vegetation is to be seen,
nor does it look as if there ever would be any vege
tation there again. This seeming desolation, how
ever, is merely the prelude to one of nature's
brightest scenes. Even if the land is left to itself,
the rains will not long have extinguished the last
smouldering embers and soaked the ashy surface of
the soil, but there will spring up, as if by magic,
great star-like milky thistles, smooth, brown stalks
of fern, rank grasses, and a host of wild plants or
weeds of some sort. But the careful farmer antici
pates these by sowing grass-seed, rye-grass, cocks
foot, cow-grass, clover, or whatever it may be —
sometimes all of them together — broadcast among
the ashes ; and when the spring time-comes, or even
before the spring, in mild seasons, the Avhole sur-

THE WHITE POPULATION. 143
face of the ground is occupied by a luxuriant
growth. This is, virtually, the whole process of bush farming.
After that, the farmer lets the logs decay where they
lie, only, perhaps, sawing up or burning those which
are most in the way, when he has spare time ; and
his Avhole attention is given to his fences, the ar
rangements of his farmstead, the rearing of his
stock, the dairying, and so on. His troubles about
his land are at end when he has got it sown down
to grass and the pasture is well established. This,
generally speaking, occupies three years from the
time when the axe is first laid to the bush. In many
instances, nevertheless, the bush farmer, by good luck
in his seasons, or other favorable circumstances, gets
enough grass in two years to keep a number of stock ;
and there are localities where, in a single year from
going on the land, the farmers have had a plentiful
growth of self-sown grass in place of heavy bush.
The New Zealand Government have caused to be
published an excellent illustrated book on grasses
and farming plants suitable to the colony, for the in
formation of settlers. Recently, a bush farmer wrote
to the Minister of Lands for a copy of this book, and,
having received it, sent to the Minister in return a
small sheaf of the various grasses he had been able
to identify and gather on his land, then just a year
from the bush. They included six or seven valuable
kinds, and all were of great size, quite equal to the
picked specimens of which drawings are given in the
seedsmen's catalogues. The Minister kept the sheaf
in his office for exhibition to persons inquiring for

144 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
land, as an encouragement to them to go and do
likeAvise. This, of course, was an exceptional case ;
but it may be said broadly, that any man who
chooses to spend three years in breaking in a bush
farm in the North Island of New Zealand, having
selected his land with reasonable judgment, will
have a valuable property under his feet, and one
which will make him independent of all the world, if
he be not encumbered with debt to start with.
Almost all this land is purchased, whether from the
Crown or private owners, on what are called long
terms. That is to say, the purchaser has not to pay the
capital cost of the land until he has got it into profit.
He pays a deposit of 10 percent., and either pays
interest on the remainder, equivalent to a low rent, or
else has three years given him to' pay it in, without
any interest. By this method, he has the use of his
capital, if he have any, or at all e\'ents is not required
to find any money, beyond the deposit to clinch the
bargain, until he begins to get an income from the
land. After that, with anything like good fortune,
he may easily pay off the whole of the purchase-
money in a couple of years, out of the proceeds of
the land itself. Before many years are over — and
time passes quickly amid the occupations and exer
tions of making a new place — he finds himself the
owner of a beautiful and profitable little estate, grow
ing more productive every year, and involving very
little anxiety or care of any sort, in the management.
He has a comfortable, if not a luxurious', home. His
family are abundantly provided for. If he have sons,
they are his partners and fellow-workers; and if he

THE WHITE POPULATION. 145
wrant an investment for his savings, he cannot do
better than buy land in the neighborhood similar
to his own farm when he started, and help his sons
to break it in, as he broke in his. This is a very
common practice ; and at every land sale it is be
coming more and more noticeable that the lots are
purchased by the sons or relatives of settlers who
have gained their experience on the spot.
There is no denying that the life of a bush settler
is very hard, especially for the first three years. He
has to do a long and severe day's work every day, to
content himself with a rough dwelling and simple
fare, and to remain almost excluded from society for
many months together. He has to pursue this life
patiently, day after day, month after month, year
after year, without seeing any immediate return for
his toil and hardships, and perhaps without being
able to see how he is ever to overcome the formida
ble obstacles which nature has placed in hisAvay. It
is easy to understand a faint-hearted or irresolute
man shrinking from such a strain alike on his physi
cal energies and on his faculty of hope. A great
many such men have tried the life, and found it too
much for them. They have either abandoned the
struggle altogether or sunk to the condition of
laborers for wages. It is, indeed, only a life for men
with a stout heart in a stout body. For such as
these, hoAvever, it has many compensations for its
drawbacks even from the outset ; and there are not
a few bush settlers who declare that they would not
exchange their life for any other. To begin with,
the mere animal necessaries are abundantly provided,

146 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
as has already been explained, and the cost of living-
is so very small that the settler is'fredd from those
petty cares Avhich constitute so large a part of the
troubles of life in town.
Among many such testimonies, there has been
furnished, for the information of the author of this
book, an account of the expenditure of two young
men who may be called typical bush settlers, in
the Rangitikei district, Province of Wellington,
and who have met Avith great success, being now
rich men, by their own unaided exertions, one oc
cupying an important public position. During their
first two years, when they were actually working
with their own axe to break down the bush, their
whole outlay for stores of every kind was less than
^34 for the year, or a little over £16 each. This
included flour and tobacco, but not grog, of which
they had none. They lived well, not stinting them
selves at all, but at the same time not wasting
anything; and they found this expenditure suffi
cient. This is not at all an exceptional case, but,
on the contrary, it may be set down as a general
rule, that steady men with a little knowledge of bush
economy can get on very Avell on an outlay of about
six or seven shillings a week. This gives a great
independence to the life, which is in itself a singular
charm. Then the regular labor is very healthful
and invigorating, and the bush settler rarely if ever
knows what it is to feel ill or in low spirits. He has
little leisure, but it is his own ; and if he is of a lit
erary turn, he may get through a good deal of read
ing in the evening. Many a bush wizard, of very

THE WHITE POPULA TION. 147
rude exterior, contains a good shelf of books, and
among the inmates, as rude in exterior as their
dwelling, are to be found men of much mental cul
ture and a very high order of intelligence. The
equality which prevails in the bush is by no means a
bad feature of it. The settler has no servants, but
neither has he any masters. Wealth or poverty goes
for very little there ; but every man is his own mas
ter within his little sphere, and he is most respected
who most respects himself and best does his duty
toward his neighbor. There is a great deal of kind
ness and cordiality among neighbors — often living
many miles apart — in the bush, and there is literally
no limit to their hospitality or to their devotion to
one another in any emergency or distress. There is
a great attraction, also, in the ancient forest itself,
and all the beauties of nature by which the settler is
surrounded ; and it is almost pathetic to hear the
tone of enthusiasm in which these Avorthy people
speak of their humble homes and wild life, and to
observe their indifference or repugnance to the hum
drum conditions, as they deem them, of town life.
The bush is to them what the desert is to the
Bedouin, and of them it may truly be said in the
words of the American poet :
* * * Alike are they free from
Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy the vice of republics.
Neither locks have they to their doors, nor bars to their windows ;
But their dwellings are open as day and the hearts of the owners ;
There, the richest is poor, and the poorest lives in abundance.
The greatest solatium of the bush settler, however,
for any drawbacks his mode of life may have, is the
certainty of doing well if he only have courage to go

148 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
through with his undertaking. These bush farms
are among the snuggest properties in the colony, and
many a man Avho went in with nothing or next to
nothing, and worked hard for a few years, without
feeling that he was doing any great thing, is now the
possessor of a valuable estate from which he derives
an annual income equal to all the capital he ever
had. While he is living, his property is growing.
Each succeeding year finds him richer than the last,
with fewer difficulties to be overcome ; and by the
time he has reached middle life, and fairly broken in
his country, he is in an exceptionally independent
and comfortable position. It is in bush settlement,
and in this alone, that the hardy, healthful, hopeful
life of the pioneers is still to be seen in its primitive
integrity. Often is heard among the new arrivals,
or among disappointed colonists, especially in the
towns, the complaint that there are no longer the
chances of success which the early settlers enjoyed.
Nothing could be more untrue. The situation of.the
bush settlers to-day does not differ at all from that
of the first people who came to the colony ; ex
cept in the improved security of life and property,
the greater cheapness of all sorts of necessaries and
comforts, the incalculable progress in means of ac
cess, and the existence of steady and profitable mar
kets which Avere not dreamt of in the early days.
It is not necessary to describe in detail the various
sections of the agricultural and pastoral population
of the colony, whose habits of life differ but little
from those of the similar or analogous classes in
other countries. All descriptions which represent

THE WHITE POPULATION. 149
country life in New Zealand as perilous, romantic,
adventurous, or outlandish, are quite misleading.
There is no such thing in the colony, except in the
most isolated or uninhabitable parts, where a few
solitary explorers or prospectors maybe found living
the life of a hermit. Tourists or other visitors, who
wish to see rough country and experience hard
living, can get as much of both as they please with
out the slightest difficulty. They may run as much
risk as they like of being starved or frozen to death,
or of being drowned or breaking their necks, or
being burnt in a volcano or boiled in a hot spring, or
of otherwise obtaining veracious material for thrill
ing accounts of their travels when they get home.
A considerable portion of New Zealand is still unex
plored, and every year wonderful exploits of courage,
endurance, and adventure are performed by those
anxious to be the first, or among the first, to set foot
in these unknown and profoundly interesting re
gions. Unhappily, many valuable lives are lost in
this way. Only Avithin the last few months one of
the Professors of the Otago University, spending his
summer holiday in the effort to reach the great
Sutherland Fall, the second highest in the Avorld, got
separated from his companions, was overtaken by a
storm, and has never since been heard of. It may be
half a century before his skeleton will be found.
That is a genuine tragedy of New Zealand adven
ture. It also has an abundantly comic side, as num
berless incidents in a trip undertaken by a party of
jolly fellows, especially " neAV chums," will testify.
The serio-comic element may be discerned in such

150 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
stories as that of the man who, on an exploring
journey with no companion but his dog, found him
self absolutely Avithout food when still three days
from his destination. The story — his own story —
goes, that having withstood the pangs of hunger as
long as he could, he cut off the dog's tail, broiled it,
ate it, and gave the bone to the dog. Thus sustained,
the pair marched gayly into the camp they were
making for, on the day following their ingenious
meal. Another such story, and a perfectly true one,
is that of a party sent to ascertain the fate of a re
mote expedition, Avho having had literally nothing to
eat for six weeks but fish and potatoes, whilst under
going enormous exertion, experienced a ravenous
craving for some kind of fatty matter, for want of
which they seemed to be like to die. Arriving at
a hut where some stores had been deposited, they
found, to their intense delight, a box of tallow can
dles, which they divided impartially, and deliberately
devoured to the last stump before doing anything
else. Of this sort of adventure there is an endless
variety to be had in NeAv Zealand by those who
choose to go to the right' places for it, and these are
never very far off. But it is sheer fiction to color
the ordinary life of any class of the settlers by such
narratives. It is not uncommon to find station life in New
Zealand, that is to say, life on a sheep-run, described,
especially by ladies, in this romantic strain ; but, in
reality, station life has nothing of the kind in it.
There is an amusing story told of a " neAv chum," a
young man from England with nothing but his

IN THE SOUTHERN ALPS.

THE WHITE POPULATION. 15 r
clothes and his inexperience, who on arriving at
Christchurch went all round the town asking for
employment as a clerk. Coming back to his hotel
at night, he met a shipmate who had been similarly
engaged, with equally bad luck. " Well, how have
you got on ? " inquired the latter. " Oh, I haven't
got on at all," was the reply, " but I shall have an
other try to-morrow, and if I can't get a billet any
where I suppose there'll be nothing for it but to take
to this squatting." What the poor lad imagined
" this squatting " to be, is not recorded, but he
doubtless soon found out what it actually is. The
squatters, that is to say, the pastoral tenants of the
Crown, who lease the grazing of the hill country
from the Government, and the larger sheep-farmers
generally, are in fact the nearest approach to a
country gentry that the colony possesses. Sheep-
farming on a large scale cannot possibly be carried
on nowadays without large capital, and sheep-farm
ing on a small scale, in hill country at all events, is a
most precarious and unprofitable affair. Hence, the
runholder or large sheep-farmer is either a rich man
himself or represents large moneyed interests. In
too many instances, unfortunately, his run, flocks,
homestead and all, are so heavily encumbered that
he is little more than the agent of a bank or a loan
company. But even in those instances he is exter
nally a man of wealth and position, because his finan
cial principals must supply sufficient funds to carry
on the business efficiently, and there is always the
chance of a rise in the price of wool, or of stock, or
some other favorable turn of events, enabling him to

152 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
get rid of his liability. Thus, in any case, " the
station " is the manor-house of a large extent of
country, and the life of the place is thoroughly sys
tematized for the business of sheep-farming. Most
of these station houses are very comfortable homes,
not a few having pretensions to splendor and differ
ing little from country-houses in England or Scot
land. They generally have fine gardens and plan
tations, for land, water, and labor are there in plenty.
Then there are always a number of horses and coavs
and dogs ; and all the accompaniments of an easj',
though industrious and generally economical coun
try life.
The sheep-farmer is very often an English gentle
man of good family, with a wife of the same class,
and a number of sons and daughters not to be dis
tinguished from the children of a squire or a clergy
man in any county in England. One or two of the
sons, perhaps, are at Oxford or Cambridge, or are
in some profession in town in the colony, whilst
others are helping in the management of the station.
The house is gracefully furnished and provided Avith
all the refinements of an English home, and all the
domestic arrangements are to match. In some
sheep-farmers' houses there are billiard-rooms and
men-servants, and every one dresses for dinner ; but
these are quite the exception. On many stations,
where, perhaps, the farmer is a self-made man, hav
ing been a manager or a shepherd who has saved
money and got on in the world, the minage is very
homely, but generally very comfortable ; and in all
cases, almost without exception, even in very out-of-

THE WHITE POPULATION. 153
the-way places, the life is very regular and decorous,
the old rowdy days being entirely a thing of the
past. The permanent hands on a station are simply
well-paid farm-servants, and are usually very capable,
trustworthy, indefatigable men, often men of strong
individuality and noble characteristics, worthy of the
highest respect. They live in the farmer's house, or
in small houses about the homestead, or in a com
mon building set apart for them in a convenient
situation, the desire being, on well-ordered stations,
to afford both the masters and the men as much
privacy as possible. The men earn good wages and
have a maximum of personal liberty. They usually
own their own horses and dogs, and do a little trade
on their own account in horseflesh, of which they are
often excellent judges ; and many of them buy land
either from their employer or from the Crown, and
become in time considerable proprietors and em
ployers of labor in their turn. It is quite a common
thing for these rough-looking men, who seem to live
on horseback or among the sheep, and to have no
ideas apart from them, to have ^"iooo or more in
the bank, or to own a farm yielding as large an
income as their wages amount to, or more. There
is not the least objection to their being married, but,
on the contrary, the more family men there are on
the station the better the owner is pleased, generally
speaking. The shepherds lead a harder and more
lonely life ; but they are first-rate men, nearly all
Scotchmen, and usually Highlanders, with an extra
ordinary knowledge of sheep and of country and
-weather ; and absolutely to be depended on to do

154 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
their duty under any circumstances, even to the
risking of their own life. They live, in many cases,
in solitary huts away on the mountains in exposed
situations, where it is difficult to provide any com
forts ; but they make the best of it and manage very
well on the whole ; and, as they get good wages and
are at no expense, they easily save money and
acquire an independence. The type so powerfully
described by Christopher North is constantly to be
met with in New Zealand, and is rather the rule than
the exception.
The temporary hands, or traveling labor, as they
are called, on sheep stations, are quite a different
set of men. These consist of shearers and others
whose assistance is needed only for a few weeks at
the busiest time of year, that is, in the middle of
summer. They form a distinct branch of the human
family, not by any means unlike the gipsies. They
are, in fact, true nomads, and a large proportion of
them do not belong to New Zealand at all, but come
from the most distant parts of Australia. That is to
say, they folloAv the shearing, Avherever it is going
on, beginning, perhaps, in the tropical regions of
Queensland, where the shearing is earliest, and
coming on from station to station through New
South Wales and Victoria, earning a good deal of
money as they go, and then shipping to New Zea
land in time for the shearing there, and taking the
stations through in their regular order, year after
year. They get from \bs. to £i per hundred sheep.
and all found, and a good hand can shear ioo sheep
in a day. Shearing cannot be done in wet weather,

THE WHITE POPULA TION. 155
so that they often lose a good deal of time ; but the
sheep-farmer has to keep them as long as they are
on the place. They live in, a large building called
" the men's hut," where they sleep in bunks against
the wall, and take their meals at a rough table in the
middle of the room ; the food consisting of mutton,
bread, potatoes, butter or jam, tea and sugar, all
ad lib., three times a day. A cook is employed spec
ially for the shearers, and if he happen to be an ex
pert, he gives them a capital table out of the ample
and excellent materials at hand. The shearers earn
their money honestly. They work tremendously
hard while they are at it, and as a rule are conscien
tiously mindful of their employer's interests. But
they are queer characters, and, from a sort of conceit
or vanity of each other's opinion, they like to make
themselves out queerer and worse than they are.
They are extremely mixed, including every descrip
tion of mankind, from the broken-down guardsman
or cavalry officer, or the luckless younger son of
aristocratic parents, down to the very dregs of the
colonial democracy. The dialect of every county in
England or Ireland, and frequently the cockney, may
be detected among them, and they also include a
large number of foreigners and even men of color.
Each has his own history and his own individuality,
both curious enough in most cases ; but their ex
posed life, their hard labor, and their squalid dress
give them a sameness of appearance that altogether
belies their real character. Many of them are very
good felloAvs, honest and manly, and generous to a
fault ; but with few exceptions they are very rough,

156 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
and some of them are great blackguards. They use
shocking language, and seem to take a pride in
rivaling one another in the ingenuity and elaborate
ness of their oaths and epithets. Their stories —
and they spend the whole of their leisure in spinning
yarns — are totally unfit for ears polite, though often
exceedingly amusing. They have, moreover, a posi
tively aggressive air of independence and of antipathy
to all conventionality, — especially to " the blooming
swells," as they call the upper classes, — which is
partly genuine and partly affected. Many of them,
and those the leaders of opinion among them, are
social outcasts and utter Bohemians ; and it is these
also who set the example and keep up the tradition
of class animosity.
There could hardly be a more curious study of
life than is to be found in a shearers' hut when the
men are enjoying their dolce far niente, round the log
fire, unrestrained by the presence of any one not of
the cloth. There is generally a musician in every
party of shearers, and a concertina or a violin, or at
least a tin whistle, is a sine qud non in the hut.
Then a good many of them sing splendidly while
not a few are rare reciters, with a large repertoire
of stock pieces, the shearer's library almost al
ways including " The Young Reciter," or " Penny
Readings," or " Half Hours with the Best Authors,"
or some such collection ; while the constant habit of
reciting from memory gives them great fluency and
considerable oratorical power. When these com
paratively intellectual recreations fail, the shearers
let themselves out in the way of " capping yarns,"

THE HONORABLE ROBERT CAMPBELL'S OTEKEIKE STATION, NORTH OTAGO.

THE WHITE POPULATION. 157
that is, trying who can tell the most outrageously
improbable, indecent, or revolting story ; or they
discuss politics, society, or even religion with the
utmost freedom and with extraordinary animation ;
and it is astonishing what knowledge and ability
many of them display in these impromptu debates.
Occasionally, but not often, they lose their temper
and get to high words or even blows ; but as there
is nothing stronger than tea as black as ink drunk
while shearing is going on, the evening generally
ends by all hands parting good friends and turning
peacefully into their bunks, whence presently issue
stentorian snores which last without intermission
till daylight. The shearers might fittingly be de
scribed by the author of Gil Bias with illustrations
by Gustave Dore.
By degrees, as the country becomes more settled,
and the agricultural area, with its domestic popula
tion, encroaches on the pastoral, this " traveling
labor " diminishes. Farmers' sons supply the place
of the nomadic shearers, and all the old wildness
passes away. The wages paid for shearing, amount
ing often to a comfortable provision for a laboring
man for half the year, enter into the economy of the
farm, instead of being " knocked down " in a few
days' debauch at thenearest accommodation house,
and the relations of employer and employed become
those of neighbors engaged in kindred industries,
instead of those of natural enemies with only a slen
der bond of temporary self-interest between them.
Captain Wolseley, brother of the celebrated soldier,
a runholder in New South Wales, where the shearers

158 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
are a standing menace to the sheep-farming industry
by their unreasonable demands, has now invented
a sheep-shearing machine, which requires no skill ;
and this is joining with other causes and influ
ences to make the old-fashioned shearer a crea
ture of the past. It will be a happy day for New
Zealand when the traveling labor vanishes alto
gether, and when all the work of the country is
done by the settled population. The traveling
labor, though a necessity in the early stage of
colonization, is at the best a necessary evil, and it
becomes an unmitigated nuisance as soon as it
ceases to be necessary. Some idea of what a burden
it is upon the employers and also of what is called
hospitality in a colony, may be gathered from the
fact that at one sheep station in Canterbury last
year no feAver than 1500 men obtained supper, bed,
and breakfast, for which they paid not a farthing and
did no work, but which they claimed as their right
as traveling "laborers." The waste of industrial
energy that is involved in the existence of so large
a wandering population is obvious.
There is no necessity to describe in detail the occu
pations or conditions of life of the ordinary agricul
tural population, because they differ but little from
those of the agricultural population in other countries,
except that on the whole, perhaps, the farm laborers
are better off in New Zealand than in any other
country. It is not easy, in fact, to give a clear notion
at one vieAv of the agricultural community in a coun
try where the conditions are so diverse, according to
the size of the holding, the nature of the soil, and a

THE WHITE POPULATION. 159
multitude of other circumstances. Here may be a
farmer with 10,000 or 15,000 acres of freehold, carry
ing enormous crops of corn or roots — fields of 200,
400, even 600 acres are not uncommon, and one
farmer in Canterbury has been knoAvn to reap 5000
acres of wheat — feeding thousands of cattle, horses,
sheep and pigs, and possessing sheds full of agricul
tural machinery like the annex of an exhibition.
Here, not a mile from his boundary fence, may be a
group of " cockatoos," as the cottage farmers are
called, each on a tiny holding of twenty acres or less,
living in a humble " lean-to," raising potatoes or a,
patch of oats, keeping bees and fowls, and eking out
a good enough living by working for his wealthy
neighbor. Next to these may be- quite a different
sort of farm, 400 or 500 acres perhaps, including a
bit of sandy river-bed, where a man with a few hun
dreds of capital and a stalwart family carries on
mixed farming, wheat, oats, roots, hay, cattle, horses,
sheep, and pigs, without employing any labor but
what sleeps under his roof. It may be said of these
that the hardest working, and the best off, are the
cockatoos. It is a most noticeable feature of the
colony that the laboring class who, as long as they
are on Avages, scrupulously observe their eight hours
a day, and have even agitated to make it illegal for
any man to work for wages longer, set no limits on
their exertions when working for themselves. Once
on a bit of land of their own, they toil early and late,
and stint and save and contrive, so as to make the
very most of their little estate, and gain enough
money to enlarge their boundaries. The conse-

160 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
quence is, that though they made no show of wealth,
they are most of them in very good circumstances ;
and nothing strikes colonists with greater wonder, in
visiting the old country, than to see agricultural la
borers grinding all their life on starvation wages, with
absolutely no prospect for their old age but the
work-house, who by the same outlay of labor in New
Zealand might live in abundance and make them
selves independent in a few years. Between the
chawbacon of the midland counties and the colonial
cockatoo there is as great a difference as between the
ragged starveling of the East End of London and
the comfortable mechanic of the colonial towns. Yet
there is no reason in the world why any number of
chawbacons should not convert themselves into
cockatoos, greatly to their own and the colony's wel
fare, if they could but be brought to understand it.
The only important section of the industrial popu
lation remaining to be described are the miners.
These are really the flower of the working-men of
the colony, only men of good physique and equally
good morale being equal to the demands of a mining
life. The chief mineral industry of New Zealand is
-g^ld__mining, gold being tound in greater or less
quantities in almost every part of the islands where
it is geologically possible. It has even been found
abundantly in localities where, until it was found, the
geologists declared most emphatically that it never
could, should, would, or ought to be found. More
over, it is found under all sorts of conditions ; pure,
in lumps, loose among the gravel ; in scales or par
ticles in the sand of rivers ; in nuggets or rough

Mining and Hydraulic Machinery.— Thames Goldfields.

Grauamstown. — Thames.

THE WHITE POPULATION. 161
pieces in holes among stones or huge boulders ;
mixed pell-mell with the spoil of rivers backed up by
the sea ; in fine dust, mixed with black steel sand,
throAvn up on the beach from the bottom of the
sea, during storms ; in veins, or specks or needles, in
the very substance of quartz rocks, often invisible
to the naked eye when most plentiful ; in ragged
patches in rotten stone, crumbling to the touch ;
combined with silver and all sorts of other minerals ;
lying on the surface of the ground as if somebody
had just spilt it thereout of his pocket ; fixed in
the rifts of rocky gorges of thundering torrents ;
cropping out in rough ridges of quartz reefs on the
tops of hills ; hidden half a mile into the bowels of a
mountain and five hundred feet below the surface of
the earth. The distribution of gold is one of the
most puzzling phenomena of nature ; and noAvhere is
it more remarkable than in New Zealand. The
most experienced miners of California and Australia
say they never saw gold turning up so capriciously as
it does here, or under conditions so baffling to all
received rules. It is not a very uncommon thing for
pieces of gold to be found in the crops of fowls, especi
ally ducks, shoveling about for food at the bottom of
creeks ; and quite a good " prospect " has been got
among the ballast of a ship which had been loaded
from a shingle beach many miles from any known auri
ferous indications. In short, it is not safe to say of
any spot in New Zealand that gold may not be found
there, and there are few parts where, by diligent search
and hard work, a skilled miner could not get enough
for a subsistence. Skilled miners, however, never

162 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
waste their time and labor on places where only " the
color " is to be got. They know by certain indi
cations Avhere a payable gold-field is likely to exist,
and there they congregate and pursue their calling
as steadily as any other industrial class. Payable
gold may be said roughly to be gold which gives
the miner a minimum of £i \os. per week ; and any
ground which is found on fair trial to yield less than
that, is soon abandoned to Chinamen, new chums, or
other "duffers."
Gold-mining may be divided broadly into quartz
reefing and alluvial digging; and the men employed
in these tAvo are almost as different as the work in
which they are engaged. Quartz reefing consists of
obtaining gold-bearing stone from the strata in
which it lies among the natural rocks, and crushing
it in batteries by water or steam power, to extract
the gold from the substances with which it is
mechanically or chemically combined. A gold mine
of this kind is a permanent affair, taking, perhaps,
10, 20, or 30 years to work out, the gold-bearing
strata being approached by lateral tunnels or vertical
shafts, and then Avorked by stopes, that is to say,
narrow passages following the auriferous veins in any
direction they may happen to take. The quartz may
be described as a crystalline stone not unlike marble,
varying from pure white to gray, brown, blue, black,
or a mottle of all of these, and holding the eold in
its substance in particles varying in size from the
finest dust to irregular pieces forming a third or half
of the stone.
It is broken out from its natural position in the

THE WHITE POPULATION. 163
mine Avith a pick-axe and carried in small trucks
through the tunnels or in buckets up the shafts, and
so to the battery where it is to be crushed. In some
mines, diamond drills are employed for finding the
position of the gold-bearing strata, and fine hydraulic
machinery for gaining access to them, and the plant
is very large and costly. All such mines as these
are the property of companies possessing a consider
able capital, and the miners who do the actual work
are employed at wages under a manager, though
many of them own shares themselves.
They work in shifts of eight hours, and receive an
average wage of nine shillings a day. They are men
of powerful physique and great intelligence, their
Avork involving no slight responsibility and technical
skill, as well as much nerve and endurance. A large
proportion of the quartz miners in New Zealand are
Cornishmen, and there are places where the Cornish
dialect is spoken almost universally. There are no
finer body of men in the world than these Cornish
miners. They are upright and straightforward in all
their dealings, and, though singularly independent
and self-reliant, courteous and of unlimited hos
pitality in their homely way. They are very clan
nish and are immovable in their friendships, and for
this reason they constitute a considerable power
wherever a large number of them are found together.
They are all Protestants, most of them dissenters,
and many are men of strong religious feeling. Cor
nishmen are much sought after for employment in
mines where there is much machinery, or where
exceptional carefulness, trustworthiness, and intelli-

164 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
gence are required. They are saving in their
habits, and frequently become possessed of consider
able wealth.
Quite a distinct type from these are the ^Irish
miners, who form nearly half the population of the
gold-fields. They are nearly all Catholics and ex
tremely attached to their church, which, in most of
the smaller mining centers, has the whole field to it
self. They also have great physical strength, and
they are chiefly employed in sheer labor not requir
ing much mental capacity. They keep very much
to themselves, and it is not uncommon to find a large
mine entirely owned and worked by Irishmen, all
from the same part of Ireland, and all displaying a
strong family likeness to one another. They do
very well, and easily save money if they choose to
exercise a moderate degree of self-denial. Not a
few of them acquire a fortune and become mine
owners or invest in property, especially public houses,
nearly all of which on the gold fields are kept by
Irishmen. Many mining villages are so exceeding-
ingly Irish in population, dialect, and mode of life,
that a visitor might easily fancy himself in the
Emerald Isle itself. The difference is that there is
no poverty and no distinction of class, but all are
comfortably off and all are equal. The Irish miners,
though rather given to faction fights and always
ready for a bit of a shindy at election times or on
other exciting occasions, such as a wedding or a
funeral, are extremely good-natured and obliging,
and full of the national humor and light-heartedness.
On the whole, perhaps, there is no part of the world

The Big Pump. — Thames Goldfields.

- ™*~ -d*^
\ ' — '~t'-*^3h^*wr Ji
p£fe
''^TuUBllfel
':PlW--'' Fjti
HfflBH ¦- • ,r^^®fci
N^PJj
¦j»r'''K' ,<Jjr-Jj
* ~" ¦ 1
^^ ***$&&
^^^¦Bjljffillw' .
",,'*" 1
§1
W*"< |
ifflAnlll3f<i#-
s-*? .
v%^ij(Sf g^ktitrm
iS-SR^^s*
AjmP^^m.: <f5
\?i
A Rich Mine. — Thames Goldfields.
THE WHITE POPULATION. 165
where the Irish enjoy more favorable circumstances,
or make more of them, than on the New Zealand
eold-fields. It must be borne in mind that gold mining in this-L|
colony is quite a settled industry, the miners being/;/
no longer the wandering class they were thirty or.'f /
forty years ago. When they take to a place, they
remain there for many years, and a great many of
the younger generation have never been away from
the spot where they work.
The alluvial miners lead a totally different life
from the quartz miners. They are occupied exclu
sively in extracting the gold from the earth where it
occurs free, that is to say, not embedded in stone
requiring crushing or any other mechanical or chem
ical process. The alluvial miner requires nothing
but pick and shovel to get out the wash-dirt contain
ing the gold, and make the races or channels in which
to wash it, and — plenty of water. This means that
only a small amount of capital, or no capital at all, is
required ; and accordingly alluvial claims are worked
by single men, a couple of mates, three or four to
gether, or, in the case of large claims, with much hy
draulic sluicing, twelve men, or twenty or possibly
more, working together and sharing the proceeds in
common. Miners who work alone are called "hat.
J^rs^.' one explanation of the term being that they fre
quently go mad from the solitude of their claim
away in the bush, exemplifying the proverb, " As
mad as a hatter." The hatter's life seems, indeed,
almost intolerable, for he often sees not a human
face from week's end to week's end, and has abso-

166 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
lutely no companionship save that of a dog, a cat,' or
a bird. Yet there are many who prefer this life to
any other, although they might get more gold by
sharing the claim with a mate or two. The instances
are not a few where, when a hatter has not been
seen for a long time in the township where he has
been accustomed to go for his stores, search has
been made for him, and he has been found dead in
his hut or down at the bottom of his workings.
There is a pride of independence about the allu
vial miners, which is very remarkable and which
makes them quite a peculiar class of men, not to be
judged by the ordinary rules of character or conduct.
They love freedom above all things, and there is, per
haps, no other pursuit in civilized society where each
man is so absolutely his own master. Each earns
his living, and a very good living too, by the labor
of his own hands, and each spends what he earns
exactly as he pleases. Each has his own hut, which
he builds and fits up to suit himself, and within that
hut he is king. Many of these little homes are very
snug and picturesque, the miners having a great
turn for gardening and plenty of spare time. They
are also very comfortable inside, though everything
is on a very small scale. The miners have few and
simple wants, but they live well, the best of every
thing they use being just about good enough for
them, whether it be food or clothing. They com
prise all sorts and conditions of men, English, Irish,
Scottish, American, French, Italian, German, Scan
dinavian, Greek, Jewish, Ethiopian ;.- educated and
uneducated, polished and rough, steady and dissipa-

THE WHITE POPULATION. 167
ted, well-behaved and rowdy, philanthropists and
misanthropes, married and single, widowers and
grass widowers, handsome and ill-favored, with a
host of other varieties, each possessing a strongly
marked individuality of his own. Notwithstanding
their personal freedom from all restraint, they are
governed voluntarily in all their ways by unwritten
laws, or what may be called a powerful public opinion
or tacit code of honor, which, in fact, is much more
strictly observed among them than the conventional
rules of society are elsewhere. For this reason,
though the gold-fields are in external appearance
the wildest parts of the colony and their inhabitants
and their dwellings the roughest, life and property
are safer there than anywhere else, crime is almost
unknoAvn, and there is more civility and real good
manners than in the urban communities. It is a
maxim that every digger is a gentleman, and it is
quite a startling experience to find men whose
looks are enough to frighten anybody at first
sight, polite, considerate, and simple-minded, and
in numberless instances very well read and highly
cultivated. The female population of the gold-fields, too, not
withstanding their somewhat ungraceful surround
ings, are almost invariably gentle and amiable and
full of sensibility, devotedly attached to their people
and their home, but yet kindness itself to visitors
and strangely influenced by any attention or sym
pathy that is shown to them. Their lot is rather a
hard one, though their material wants are abun
dantly supplied ; but they adapt themselves to it with

168 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
admirable cheerfulness, and manage to make very-
happy homes out of not very promising materials.
The gold-fields are a great place for children, whose
lot is a very merry one. They want for nothing,
and, instead of being looked upon as an encumbrance
or an anxiety, are considered the greatest of bless
ings. They enjoy almost unlimited liberty, but yet
are under very fair control, and are usually well-
behaved and singularly interesting from their curious
combination of simplicity and independence. They
all go to school, the miners being most anxious for
education ; but they begin work at an early age, and
are generally helpful and energetic in a degree rarely
found among town children.
/ Self-reliance, fortitude, and a chivalrous kind of
generosity are the prevailing characteristics of the
gold-miners, and nobody who sees much of them
fails to conceive a great admiration or a very hearty
liking for them. They are a splendidly capable peo
ple, and their industry and enterprise are something
quite amazing. In order to supply the various
claims with the all-necessary water, they combine
together over a great area, the whole of a vast
watershed in fact, and construct aqueducts many
miles in length, and carrying an immense body of
Avater, through mountainous, heavily wooded and
terribly rugged country, from which a sufficient
quantity is drawn off in channels or pipes, by all the
contributors along the line of the work. Similarly,
they construct tail races, great channels by which
the waste earth from which the gold has been ex
tracted may be carried away by the force of water

THE WHITE POPULATION. 169
from all the claims, and deposited in some river-bed
or other spot prescribed for the purpose, where it
will not be in the way of further mining operations.
In many of the claims, too, the works constructed by
separate parties on their own account are most won
derful. Nothing seems to daunt the miners' enter
prise, to tire their patience, or to baffle their ingenu
ity; but if there is gold to be got, or the prospects
are hopeful enough, they will do whatever has to be
done, no matter how much labor or money it costs.
They are unrivaled pioneers and explorers, no
other men living, perhaps, certainly not the natives
of New Zealand, being so well able to take care of
themselves in the bush or to make their way, with
all the appliances of their industry, to spots which
appear to be totally inaccessible to the foot of man.
An experienced New Zealand digger, in the prime
of life, is just about as fine a specimen of humanity
as is to be found anywhere. He can walk or ride, or
climb, or sAvim, to almost any distance, carrying a
" swag," that is to say, a compact pack, containing
all his baggage and utensils, rolled in his blankets or
tent, and weighing enough to have crushed a Roman
legionary. And neither hunger nor thirst, fatigue
nor suffering, solitude nor danger can keep him from
the goal that he has before him.
Taking its advantages with its drawbacks, the New
Zealand gold-miner's life is a very fine one ; and it is
a matter for surprise that the youth and energy of
old countries do not find their way to it in greater
numbers than they do.
The coal-miners are quite a different class of men

17° NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
from the gold-miners, Avho, for some reason that is
not very clear, profess to regard them as inferiors.
In some parts of New Zealand, the coal mines and
the gold mines lie close together, as for instance in
the Grey Valley, on the West Coast of the Middle
Island, where it is doubtful which is the more im
portant industry. There the two classes of miners
are seen working side by side under circumstances
which admit of ready comparison of all their condi
tions ; and it is not easy to see where the assumed
superiority of the gold-miners lies ; except, of course,
in the independence of the alluvial miners, who are
the sole employer of their own labor and their own
master in all respects, or, possibly, in the opportuni
ties Avhich the quartz-miners have of investing their
earnings in shares of the mine where they work, and
thus becoming partly their own employers. The
coal-miners are a splendid body of men, and though
their work is to some extent mechanical, there is
abundant scope for original talent or for acquired
knowledge in a country where the coal measures
present such novel and varied features as they do in
New Zealand. They are paid, on the whole, quite as
well as gold miners, and their mode of life is more
conducive to saving. They lead a more domestic
life, dwelling in comfortable cottages near the mine,
generally with a bit of land about them, and their
habits are for the most part very regular. The coal-
miners are mostly English or Welsh, many of them
colonial born, but there are also a large proportion
of Irish among them. They work hard while they
are at it, but they never work long hours ; and they

THE WHITE POPULATION. lji
live well and have a good deal of leisure and com
fort. If they have not so much freedom as the gold-
miners, they have a compensating advantage in the
certainty and steadiness of their employment, and in
the feeling that if they are dependent on their em
ployer for wages, he is equally dependent on them
for the means of paying wages.
Cojil-mimng is an industry that is growing rapidly
and surely. With the exception of the trade in
frozen meat, it is increasing faster than any other in
the colony, and it has fewer and slighter fluctuations.
There will in the future be a constant demand for
men of suitable character in the coal-mines ; and an
excellent living will be open to large numbers of
families. Coal deposits of one kind or another are
very widely distributed over both Islands, and the
industry is carried on in a very diverse manner ac
cording to the local circumstances. In some parts
the mining consists of nothing more than shoveling
the coal from the side of a hill into trucks or vessels,
whilst in others the seams are worked precisely as
they are in England, though with far less danger,
owing to the rarity of faults and the peculiar geo
logical structure. Thus there is room for miners of
all grades of efficiency ; and doubtless many men Avho
call themselves coal-miners are merely ordinary
laborers, who certainly are not to be compared
either with the athletic, intelligent, fearless gold-
miners or with the skilled hands in the scientifically
worked coal-mines. A wrong impression will be
gained of the condition of the coal-miners of New
Zealand if it is not understood that they nowhere

172 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
dwell in large towns. There is absolutely nothing
at all resembling a " black country " in the colony,
and it is very hard at present to realize that there
ever can be. For coal-miners, as for gold-miners
and all others, it is essentially a green country, where
ample space and fresh air and healthy and pleasur
able surroundings are the common privilege of all.
The largest coal-mining center is Brunnerton on
the Grey River, and there the miners live on -a
beautiful plateau surrounded by wooded hills and
vales, amid some of the most picturesque scenery in
the world, and the griminess of their calling by no
means extends beyond the actual workings. It need
hardly be said that this rural condition of life has
an overwhelming influence on the character of the
people. The squalor, degradation, and violence, so
painfully noticeable in many of the mining districts
in Europe, are totally unknown here. The miners
are highly respectable and very well to do, and there
is little or no difference between their family life and
that of any other colonists. The same man who
looks like the arch-fiend himself when encountered in
the bowels of the earth, almost entirely naked, black
with coal-dust, glistening with perspiration, and
bearing a light bound on his brow, is in reality a
capital fellow, well-spoken and well-principled, with .
a snug home of his own, a bonny wife, and a troop of
rosy children, and, perhaps, with ideas and aspira
tions much above the ordinary level of the working
class. It is all a question of externals, and Professor
Teufelsdrock's philosophy of clothes applies here as
elsewhere. As Carlyle well put it, a naked duke

AN AQUEDUCT ON THE WEST COAST GOLDFIELDS. MIDDLE ISLAND.

THE WHITE POPULATION. 173
addressing a naked House of Lords would not be a
very imposing object ; and so, to be truthfully drawn,
the social condition of the people must be shown
not from the nude, in actual labor, but surrounded
by the advantages which are the fruits of labor. It
is a pity the sage of Chelsea did not visit the colonies
before he wrote Sartor Resartus.

VII.
TRADE AND COMMERCE.
It will doubtless have been gathered from the
foregoing pages that the people of New Zealand are
a very commercial people, and that is what they are,
above all things. Practically the whole community,
outside of the official class, and even including many
of the official class, are engaged in producing some
thing to sell or in exchanging commodities. The
whole attention of the people, in fact, is devoted to
business, not in the intense, eager way of the Ameri
cans, but in a very earnest and practical way. The
result is that the trade of the country is remarkably
large in proportion to its age and population. Dry
statistics and columns of figures have been studiously
avoided in this book, and it is not proposed to in
troduce any here. It will be sufficient to say that last
year, 1888, when the population stood at a little over
600,000 Europeans and 40,000 Maoris, the exports
amounted to ,£7,767,325, nearly eight millions sterl
ing. That is to say that the people, after amply pro
viding for their own wants, had a surplus production
of more than £\2 per head, men, women, and chil
dren. The actual number of people who produced
this great surplus by their labor probably does not
exceed 150,000, which would give £/$, per head,
surely an extraordinary amount. On the other hand,
174

TRADE AND COMMERCE. 175
these»people imported goods to the value of .£5,941,-
900. It will be observed that this leaves an excess t
of exports over imports of ,£1,825,425 ; and this is, !
in truth, one of the most striking features of the '
commercial condition of NeAv Zealand at the present
time. It is estimated that this year, 1889, the
imports will be no greater than they were last year,
but probably less ; while the exports will be enor
mously greater. It is not at all impossible that New
Zealand may arrive at a situation where her exports
will be double her imports in value. This may seem
puzzling from the point of view of political economy ;
but, as a matter of fact, it can be explained very
easily and satisfactorily. For many years the colony
imported much more than she exported, and though
much that she imported was turned to profitable ac
count, her people, nevertheless, ran heavily into
debt to British and Australian capitalists. They are
now paying off this debt by means of surplus pro
duction ; and the exports will continue to be largely
in excess of the imports, until the people have cleared
themselves, and can afford to spend their whole sur
plus production in the products of other countries.
Ignorant persons sometimes ask what use the
colonies are* to Great Britain, and even statesmen
Avho ought to know better have been heard to say
that it would be no loss to the Empire if the colonies
Avere cast adrift or severed the connection of their
own accord. What is still more astonishing, com
mercial men, and especially those English papers
which claim to represent the views of the great mer
cantile centers, have contended that it would be

176 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
better for the Empire to lose the colonies than to
incur any responsibilities for their defense, or be
come involved in international complications on their
account. If those who think in this way would take
note of one or two patent facts, they would surely
discern how entirely mistaken they are. The case
of New Zealand should suffice to show them that.
This small and distant colony, with a population no
V greater than that of Liverpool, has a trade with the
\United Kingdom of ten millions sterling per annum.
Last year it reached ,£9,434,141. This year it will,
in all reasonable probability, exceed ten millions by as
much as it was short of it last year. This is a fact
which speaks for itself, and which should appeal elo
quently to that class of politicians and writers to
whom all appeals upon patriotic, imperial, or other
sentimental grounds are in vain.
The truth is, New Zealand is one of Great Brit
ain's very best customers. It sends about six mil
lions' worth of produce to Great Britain annually,
and it takes back four millions' worth of British
goods, — the balance of two millions going at present
to pay for British money or goods received in past
years. Before long, it will take six millions a year
in new o-oods.
Next to the United Kingdom, Australia is the
chief market for the New Zealand trade. Last year
the exports to Australia amounted to ,£1,504,876,
and the imports from Australia to .£1,177,186. This
year, owing to the drought in Australia, which has
necessitated a vast demand upon New Zealand for
food and feed, the exports may be nearly doubled,

TRADE AND COMMERCE. 177
and the imports correspondingly increased. The
United States of America comes next with curiously
evenly balanced exports and imports which amounted
last year to .£323,069 and ,£323, 716 respectively.
Then China, Japan, and the countries in the Indian
Ocean ; then the Islands of the Pacific, including no
fewer than twenty-five different groups ; then India ;
and then, far away down on the list, Europe, the
country having the largest trade with New Zealand
being Germany, France next. The whole trade with
Europe only amounts to ,£42,000 for the year, as
against ten millions with Great Britain. Surely this
Avealthy little commercial country is worth looking
after, even from the sordid point of view of commer
cial self-interest.
The chief production of New Zealand is wool,
which furnishes nearly half the value of theTotal
export, ,£3,115,008 last year. The whole of this
goes to London, whence about two-fifths of it is re
exported to France, Belgium, and America. Much
of the best wool used in the carpet factories abroad
comes from New Zealand. Gold comes next, with a
value of about .£1,000,000, all of which goes to
London. Then come grain, wheat, oats, barley, and
malt, peas, beans, and grass seeds, which go mostly
to Australia, though, when prices are high at Home,
large quantities are shipped thither. The grain
trade of New Zealand is exceedingly variable, de
pending as it does upon circumstances far away
from the colony. It is considered that wheat can
just be grown at a profit, and that is all, at 2s. 6d.
per bushel free on board, and oats at is. 6d. ; and if

178 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
there is no certain prospect of obtaining those prices
as a minimum, large tracts of grain country are put
in grass or roots for feeding sheep, which pays
better. In that case the export is small, and some
years it has dwindled down to very puny figures.
This year, on the other hand, the deficient harvest
in Great Britain, America, the Continent of Europe,
Egypt, and Australia, especially the last, gave a cer
tainty of high prices, and every available acre was
put into crop. The season AA'as magnificent, and a
gigantic harvest has been gathered in superb condi
tion. The lowest yield of wheat, grown on wretched
land not ordinarily considered fit for cropping at all,
has been fifteen bushels to the acre ; while sixty or
seventy bushels has been quite common, ninety
bushels has been got off considerable areas, and one
farmer in Canterbury threshed ninety-three bushels
to the acre off a small paddock, 651 bushels from
seven acres. The yield of oats has been quite as
extraordinary, the grain agencies, whose interest is
to decry rather than to exaggerate the harvest,
acknowledging crops up to 1 10 bushels to the acre.
The price of wheat in New Zealand this year is from
\s. to 45. 6d. per bushel free on board, and of oats
from 2s. gd. to 3s. 3d. The profits, therefore, have
been enormous, and the export much greater than in
any previous year.
Reference has been made more than once to the
drought in Australia as a factor in the grain trade of
New Zealand, and a word of explanation on that
subject may be advisable here. Australia, owing to
its immense extent, its total want of high mountain

TRADE AND COMMERCE. 179
ranges bearing any proportion to its area, and its
position toward the torrid zone, is subject to a visi
tation, at irregular periods, of a wave of rainless and
intensely hot air, which, Avhen it comes, dries every
thing up till there appears to be no moisture left in
the country. Sometimes this only lasts for a few
weeks, when it does comparatively-little harm. But
sometimes it lasts for many months, entirely depriv
ing the country of the rainfall necessary for the
growth of plants ; and when that takes place, the
losses are almost incalculable. The drought which
set in during the winter of 1888, and lasted, with
little intermission, until the end of summer in
March, 1889, is estimated to have destroyed nine
millions of sheep and 200,000 head of cattle, besides
causing a deficiency of six millions of bushels of
wheat and one million of bushels of other cereals.
These are the ascertained losses officially reported
and published, but it may be taken for certain that
they do not represent anything like the whole.
Now, New Zealand never suffers from drought. Its
natural formation and its situation effectually pre
vent that. In seasons when the drought is most
cruel in Australia, in fact, New Zealand is at its
prime ; the unbroken weather of a dry summer
bringing to perfection the crops which have been
well nourished by the unfailing rains of winter and
spring. The result is that when Australia is visited
by drought — the northern and eastern colonies of
Queensland and New South Wales being the chief
sufferers, and Victoria in the south being compara
tively exempt — the people there look to New Zea-

180 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
land for every description of food for man and beast.
Not only grain and breadstuff's, but potatoes, hay,
chaff, roots, vegetables, butter, cheese, bacon, hams,
even meat and fish, preserved or frozen, are sent
over in immense quantities and eagerly bought at
Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, at highly remuner
ative prices. This trade is steadily growing, and
there cannot be a doubt that in time a great part of
Australia will be supplied entirely with food staples
from New Zealand.
It oueht to be added that when a good season
does occur in Australia, that is to say, when plenty
of rain falls at the right time of year, the rapidity
with which the flocks and herds and crops are re
stored is simply marvelous. Thus in a single year,
1887-8, New South Wales increased her flocks by
seven millions of sheep, and in the same year Aus
tralia, instead of having to import many millions of
bushels of grain, had many millions of bushels to
export. In a Avord, the trade of New Zealand with
Australia is very precarious, but extremely profit
able whilst it lasts.
Next in importance to grain, among the exports,
is kauri gum, valued at ,£500,000, the whole of
which goes to the United States for the manufacture
of varnish. Next comes meat, frozen and preserved,
with a value of ,£400,000, and rapidly increasing.
Practically, it all goes to England. Then comes
timber, exported to Australia to the value of .£150,-
000, and then flax {phormiuni), which last year
reached a value of ,£75,000, but will probably reach
three times that amount this year.

AN ARTIFICIAL HARBOR, OAMARU. OTAGO.

TRADE AND COMMERCE. i8r
These are the chief items, but there is also a large
export of miscellaneous articles of commerce, dairy
produce, tallow, roots, seeds, hides, horns, fungus,
woolens, silver, antimony, coal, and many others, with
a total vaLue of ,£1,650,000 last year.
Mention has been made more than once in this
book of the difficulty of describing with seeming ac
curacy a country undergoing such rapid development
as that of New Zealand ; and this difficulty is espe
cially noticeable in giving an account of its trade and
commerce. It is impossible to tell from year to year,
or at a distance of a few years, what fresh sources
of wealth may have been discovered or what new
avenues of enterprise may have been opened. The
people of such a country are like children in an en
chanted garden, wandering at their will amid flowers
and fruits, sometimes baffled by thickets or thorns or
pitfalls, but led ever onward by one bright prospect
after another, and encouraged and restored when
most' inclined to despond, by some unexpected piece
of good fortune. Truth is proverbially stranger than
fiction, and the narrative of the Swiss Family Robin
son, which always raises a smile by the never-failing
luck of those amiable adventurers, is prosaic, not
withstanding its wild improbability, by comparison
with the real experiences of the British Family Rob
inson who are the people of New Zealand. There
are numbers of settlers, still on the sunny side of
middle life, who remember the colony before it had
entered into the dreams of the most sanguine that it
could ever export wool. What few sheep there Avere
for food were the culls of the Australian flocks, sent

1 82 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
doAvn in crazy sailing-vessels, and so subject to dis
ease that whole flocks used to be swept away in a
few days. Yet from these miserable animals, the
capabilities of the colony for wool-growing having
been ascertained and proved, sprang the superb flocks
which now yield an export of between three and four
millions sterling, and which are altogether free from
disease. So with grain. For many years New Zea
land imported all its breadstuffs from Chili or South
Australia, and, after this import ceased, grew no
more than was required for its own consumption.
At length, a Mr. Bluett propounded a theory of ex
porting grain to Europe.
This Bluett deserves a word to his memory here,
as the father of the New Zealand grain trade. He
was a Devonshire man of good family, a young-
clergyman who was brought out by the Bishop of
Christchurch as specially suited for colonial work,
and so he proved to be, though in a different sense
from that in which the worthy prelate regarded him.
Commissioned to the cure of souls . in the Sehvyn
district, in Canterbury, one of the best farming dis
tricts in the colony, and having the command < of
considerable means, he bought land, acquired flocks
other than the flock committed by the Bishop to his
care, and devoted himself to high farming. He
became, in fact, what Sidney Smith called a " squar
son," — a cross, that is, between a squire and a
parson, — and being a jolly fellow, was universally
known throughout his country-side, and far be
yond it, as Friar Tuck. His ideas of the proper
combination of the functions of a clergyman and

TRADE AND COMMERCE. 1 83-.
of a farmer, however, did not coincide with those
of his spiritual superiors. For instance, it was
a common thing for him to drive to church on
the top of a cartload of sheepskins, and after con
ducting the service in a most impressive manner,
administering the sacrament, baptizing the babies,
and doing all that was necessary within the sa
cred edifice, to hold a sort of market outside, dis
pose of his skins, make a deal for a colt or a calf,
advise the farmers about their crops, hire a plow
man or some reapers, and, in short, do all the agri
cultural business for the week. The simple country
folk saAv no harm in this, but, on the contrary, be
came strongly attached to their farmer-priest and
very much influenced by him in their worldly as Avell
as in their spiritual affairs. The Bishop did not see
things in the same light. His Lordship recom
mended Mr. Bluett to resign his cure and stick to
his sheepskins, which he cheerfully did. From that
time until his death in 1886, he applied himself ex
clusively to rural pursuits, sitting for some years as
the representative of Selwyn in the Colonial Parlia
ment, where his burly figure, still attired in clerical
black, with the straight-cut Oxford collar and white
" choker," was always prominent Avherever a Fencing
Bill or a Cattle Bill or a Thistle Bill, or any other
measure affecting the agricultural industry, was be
fore the House.
It was he who first made the calculation, and
proved it by experiment, that wheat might be
shipped to England at a profit. The first quota
tion of New Zealand wheat on the London market

1 84 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
was treated as a joke. It was supposed to refer,
not to wheat from New Zealand, but to new wheat
from Zealand, which is quite a different thing.
Bluett, however, knew very well what he was about,
and under his strenuous advice the Selwyn farmers,
believing, yet half afraid, put great areas of grass
land into wheat and sent it to England. The re
sults were perfectly satisfactory, and Avithin a very
few years the export had risen to three or four hun
dred thousand pounds a year. The quickest and
best method, moreover, had been arrived at, of con
verting the native tussock grass-land into permanent
artificial pasture carrying three times as many stock
as the tussock carried before ; and also of securing a
rotation of crops. The grateful farmers gave their
beloved Friar a banquet and a splendid service of
plate ; and to the end of his life he was their guide,
philosopher, and friend. This one man's intelligence
and foresight changed the whole character of a great
part of the colony, and influenced the future of its
commerce in an incalculable degree.
The wonderful rise and progress of the trade in
frozen meat, which in seven years has produced an
export approaching a million sterling a year; has
been dwelt on elseAvhere, and so has the recent initi
ation of the trade in dairy produce. As to the latter,
however, it is necessary to say here, in classing dairy
produce among the miscellaneous articles of com
merce which go to make up a value of ,£1,650,000,
that that has reference to last year, 1888, and that it
is quite probable that during this year, 1889, dairy
produce may take a place in the exports of the

TRADE AND COMMERCE. 185
colony among the foremost staples. The trade has
actually undergone a considerable change while this
book was being written, and New Zealand butter and
cheese are now established in the English market on
a footing which cannot fail to cause an immense and
a rapidly increasing production.
Of the New Zealand coal trade, again, it is impos
sible to speak at all definitely, because nobody knows
what it is going to turn out. Twenty years ago,
New Zealand coal was utterly despised. Even the
Government Avould not use it on the railways, while
the prejudice against it for household use was quite
insuperable. It now supplies two-thirds of the con
sumption of the colony, and would supply the whole
but for the convenience, of importing back cargoes
of cheap coal from New South Wales in exchange
for farm produce ; and it is already largely exported,
not only to the neighboring colonies, but to India
and China. It is beginning to be realized, in fact,
that New Zealand is destined to be the colliery of
the southern hemisphere. The presence of great
coal deposits, of course, determines the question of
many other industries, especially the metal indus
tries. Hitherto, New Zealand has done nothing in
the production of metals except gold and silver ob
tained by comparatively crude processes. It has,
however, mineral possessions the extent or value of
which is but vaguely guessed at. Of these, the most
promising at present, perhaps, is iron, or rather steeh
Iron is chiefly found in two forms, ironstone or crude
ore, of which there are literally mountains, but which
has never been worked even experimentally, and

1 86 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
steel sand. The steel sand of New Zealand, which
is found in inexhaustible quantities on the sea-shore,
appears to be almost pure steel, reduced by some
natural process to a fineness about equal to that of
ordinary sea-sand. A magnet takes up as much of
it as it has force enough to hold. Thus, when gold
dust is found with steel sand, a very common occur
rence, the metals are separated by simply stirring
them with a magnet, Avhen the steel sand clings to
the magnet, and the gold-dust alone is left. For
many years past the virtues of this steel sand have
been recognized, and cutlery of the finest temper has
been made from it and sold in London ; but the cost
of smelting it has been too great for any commer
cial purposes ; and it has hitherto defied any cheaper
processes. Last year, nevertheless, a furnace was
successfully worked at Henui, in Taranaki, on the
west coast of the North Island, where the sand was
run into ingots of malleable steel of rare quality.
Through sheer ignorance of the method of cooling
the furnace, however, it was burst, and the work was
stopped; but since the beginning of the present year
it has been restored, and the production of steel has
been carried on with uninterrupted success. The
cost appears to be trifling, and, though nothing is
known for certain of the commercial results as yet,
there is reasonable ground for supposing that a new
article of infinite value has been added to the list of
the colony's exports.

THE BEALEY ACCOMMODATION HOUSE. Alt. 3000 Ft.
The Southern Alps in the Background,

VIII.
BUSINESS AND TRANSIT.
The imports of New Zealand from Great Britain
consist of every description of manufactures, machin
ery, metals and metal goods, textile fabrics, clothing,
wines and spirits, prepared foods of every sort, in
short, all articles of consumption which can best be
supplied by an old country with cheap labor and cap
ital and highly organized industries. The competi
tion for the sale of these is very keen indeed, and the
consequence is that they are sold cheaply, great busi
ness knowledge and special advantages in buying
being required to make any substantial profit on
them. The transit is now so speedy and so direct
that everything that is needed, either for household
use or for the purposes of any local industry, is
obtained from home at the lowest trade price. The
tendency of the import trade is more and more to
eliminate the middle-man and to bring the colonial
consumer and the British manufacturer together.
There is little demand in the colony for high-priced
goods of superior finish ; but neither will the colo
nists have anything to do with shoddy or " brumma
gem " goods. A durable quality at a medium price
is Avhat is uniformly sought for ; and the effect of
this is to restrict the imports to certain well-defined
lines, and, at the same time, to keep their value
187

188 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
down to a figure that seems disproportionate to their
A'olume. The imports from the Australian colonies are
singularly few. Coal is the chief one, and this is
taken almost entirely as a back cargo from Sydney
in exchange for produce. Fruit and wine, sugar,
hardwood timber, tan bark, some kinds of leather,
and British or foreign goods coming through the
Australian markets, fill up the scanty list. The
hostile tariffs which at present stand like a wall
round each of the colonies except NeAv South
Wales, have a great deal to do Avith this. These
tariffs are intended to promote manufactures; but
practically, none of the manufactures of any one col
ony are exported to any other colony ; and the only
effect of the tariffs is to check the interchange of
commodities among them, and to give Great Brit
ain and foreign countries a monopoly of the import
trade. From America, New Zealand imports kerosene,
tobacco, agricultural implements, especially reapers
and binders, barbed Avire for fences, cutlery, avoocI-
Avare, furniture, canned fish and fruit, and a few
minor articles. Tea comes direct from China and
India, corn-sacks, wool-bales, and cigars from Singa
pore, sugar from Mauritius, Java and Fiji; and quan
tities of fresh fruit of the tropical kinds, from the
islands of the Pacific.
The commerce of the colony, as regards both
imports and exports, is mainly carried on by old
established mercantile houses of great respectability
and considerable wealth, who are agents for a num-

BUSINESS AND TRANSIT. 189
ber of British and foreign manufacturers or ex
porters, and Avho do every kind of mercantile busi
ness ; or by large financial and agency companies,
who export produce on their own account or on
account of the growers, and import either on their
own account or on commission. Some of these com
panies, by lending money on mortgage of pastoral
and agricultural properties, have got the whole busi
ness connected with these properties into their hands,
all their produce being exported through them and
all their supplies requisite for working them being
imported through the company. This has given
rise to a good deal of jealousy on the part of mer
chants, who complain that these companies are grow
ing into huge monopolies and destroying legitimate
business ; and there is much popular prejudice against
them from the impression that they make exorbitant
profits and drain money from the colony for the
benefit of the absentee shareholders. The truth is,
however, that vast sums of cheap capital have been
introduced into the colony through these associa
tions, which could not otherwise have been obtained,
greatly to the extension of settlement and the
increase of production ; whilst it appears from an
unprejudiced view of their operations during many
years, that their dealings have been fairly favorable
to their customers and their profits have been no
more than might reasonably be looked for. The
objections which have been made against them may
be attributed in a measure to the greneral discontent
prevailing in times of depression, and are already
ceasing to be much heard of, as prosperity revives.

190 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
It cannot be denied, however, that some of these
companies have committed a grave mistake, from
every point of view, in making such large advances
upon landed properties, for the sake of securing
business, that they destroyed the individual interest
of the nominal owners in them and exposed them
selves to the odium of seeking to acquire a monopoly
of land. From this cause they have incurred heavy
losses", besides involving many of their clients in
hopeless embarrassments, for borrowed money is apt
to be spent carelessly. They are one and all apply
ing themseh'es now, however, to calling in advances
and divesting themselves of landed responsibilities
as opportunities offer; and the probability is that in
a few years there will no longer be any just ground
for complaint against them on that score.
The banking business of New Zealand is conducted
by six powerful institutions, the NeAv Zealand Bank,
the Colonial Bank of New Zealand, the National
Bank of New Zealand, the Union Bank of Australia,
the Bank of New South Wales, and the Bank of
Australasia. Of these, the first three are local com
panies, the others being branches of Australian
banks. In the very early days the Oriental Bank
did all the business in New Zealand, such as it was ;
and after that the Union Bank of Australia took the
place of the Oriental, other Australian banks follow
ing, as the business increased. The Bank of New
Zealand, established in 1861, however, speedily ac
quired a position of great influence and has for many
years been the principal bank in the colony. The
Colonial and National Banks are also flourishing

BUSINESS AND TRANSIT. 191
institutions, and are gaining steadily in favor among
the colonists. All these banks are under charters
from the New Zealand Parliament, and have a legally
authorized note issue, only limited by the amount of
their gold reserve, from ,£1 upwards. The ordinary
currency consists of ,£1 notes of all the six banks,
which circulate indiscriminately throughout the col
ony. Hence the word " note " is commonly used
for "pound." For instance, a man may say, "I
gave a hundred notes for the cattle," meaning that
he gave ,£ioo for them, though he may have given a
check for the money or ten ,£10 notes. These
notes are payable in gold at par on demand at any
branch of the bank which issued them. They are,
therefore, in no respect paper money, except as a
convenient substitute for coin in a country where
the necessity for carrying large sums in coin would
be a serious draAvback to business. The use of
checks prevails to an extraordinary extent, largely
dispensing with the practice of carrying money at
all ; the check of any well-known man being looked
upon as equivalent to cash, and actually passing
through many different hands as cash. This custom
obviously affords facilities for fraud, and judges and
magistrates are never tired of inveighing against it
for that reason ; but on the whole, no doubt, its ad
vantages outweigh its disadvantages ; and it is in
itself an evidence of the p-ood faith which exists be-
tween man and man in the colony.
The shipping trade of New Zealand is mainly in the
hands of three exceedingly enterprising companies,
namely, the New Zealand Shipping Company, the

192 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
Shaw Saville and Albion Company, and the Union
Steam Shipping Company. The first two conduct
the ocean trade, and the third the coastal and inter
colonial trade. The New Zealand Shipping Com
pany and the Shaw Saville and Albion Company
own each a direct line of Royal Mail Steamers from
New Zealand to London via Rio de Janeiro and
Plymouth, and carry the mails alternately once a
fortnight under contract Avith the New Zealand gov
ernment, doing the trip each way in forty-two days.
These tAvo splendid lines of steamers of from 4000
to 5000 tons, supplemented by a fine fleet of sailing
ships, carry the bulk of the exports and imports, and
give great satisfaction both to passengers and ship
pers. They have, in fact, revolutionized the trade
of the colony, and though they appear far in advance
of present requirements, no other country in the
world of similar commercial proportions having any
thing like such shipping accommodation as New
Zealand enjoys, they have already gone a great Avay
to create the demand which they have supplied by an
ticipation. The Union Steam Shipping Company is
a remarkable instance of Avhat may be done from small
beginnings by sheer good management. It origi
nated in the private ownership of two little harbor
steamers for bringing passengers from the ships at
Port Chalmers to Dunedin, at the head of Otago
Harbor, and it extended its operations from one little
coast port or roadstead to another, until at length it
drove out all competitors, and noAv conducts the
whole coastal steam trade, and the whole steam trade
between NeAv Zealand and Australia ; and even

BUSINESS AND TRANSIT. 193
shares with the Oceanic Royal Mail Company the
mail and passenger service with Great Britain and
America vid San Francisco. The Union Steam
Shipping Company owns forty steamers, some of
them magnificent boats, and gives employment, di
rectly or indirectly, to many thousands of people.
There is, perhaps, no local commercial institution of
which the colonists are more proud, or more justly
proud, than this wonderful development of maritime
enterprise. The mercantile condition of the colony,
and even the habits of the people, have been largely
influenced by it ; and, in fact, New Zealand would
scarcely seem the same country without the Union
Company. The internal trade is very largely conducted by
the government railways, now exceeding 2000 miles
in length, supplemented by the Wellington and
Manawatu Railway, a bold and successful enterprise
in the North Island, to Avhich allusion has already
been made in describing the industries of the colony.
But there are still parts of the country where there are
no raihvays ; and in these the traffic is by a well organ
ized system of drays with teams of four, six, eight, or
ten poAverful horses ; whilst in the most remote or
Inaccessible localities pack-horses are still employed.
In all these matters, as in its commerce and indus
tries, the colony is in a state of such rapid progres
sion and such constant change that it is not safe to
dwell much on particular features for fear of giving
a fixed impression which in a year or two would be
a Avrong one. Everything is marching. There is
no standing; at ease.

IX.
POLITICS AND LAWS.
New Zealand is as much the counterpart of Great
Britain politically as it is in so many other respects.
In all matters of government and laws, the Mother
Country is the model which has been followed ; in
some directions, perhaps, with a servile rather than
an intelligent imitation. In the opening chapters
of this book it has been shown that when Great
Britain made the first hesitating and unwilling
attempts to deal with New Zealand — or rather, when
New Zealand was forced by the irresistible pressure
of circumstances into the possession of Great Brit
ain — the Imperial Government were utterly at a loss
to knoAV what to do with it. Their sole idea ap
peared to be to set up a native State — in a country
in which the native tribes hated each other more than
they hated the European intruders, and where their
normal condition was one of internecine and im
placable strife — under the protectorate of the British
Crown. The protectorate, of the British Crown, in
that case, meant simply the personal rule of the
Resident, supported by a sloop of war and tempered
by the want of money and the hopelessness of enforc
ing authority at any point beyond the range of a
thirty-pound howitzer. Even when the absurdity
and futility of such a system had been amply demon-
194

PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS AND GOVERNMENT HOUSE, WELLINGTON.

POLITICS AND LA WS. 195
strated by the anarchy that ensued from it, and when
the absolute necessity for an European government
had been established, the Imperial officials still
looked upon the colony simply as a "difficulty,"
Avhich could not be dealt with in any more states
manlike way than by entrusting powers practically
despotic, as far as they Avent, to the captain of the
sloop of war aforesaid.
This subject is dwelt upon with some emphasis here
in order to bring into prominence a fact Avhich has
an important bearing on the history of colonization,
and Avhich cannot be too strongly- impressed on the
mind of all public men or public writers in England
who wish to take a rational view of colonial questions
as they arise. It is that the Imperial Government
have never in a sino-le instance discharged the colo-
nizing function with a particle of success ; but that in
every instance where successful colonization has
taken place, it has been independently of the Impe
rial Government, and, in most instances, in the teeth
of every obstruction that the Imperial Government
could offer without absolutely exterminating the
colonists. In the last century, the Imperial Government
drove the North American colonies into revolution
by the most fatuous misrule, and spent more money
and lives in the vain effort to suppress them than
had been spent in two hundred years in acquiring
and maintaining them. If they had simply been let
alone to work out their own destiny, they Avould at
this day have been the most loyal and valuable pos
session of the Empire. In the early part of the pres-

196 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
ent century, the Imperial Government came very near
treating Canada as they had treated the United
States fifty years before. Happily they took the
counsel of a true statesman — a statesman without
office — and Canada was saved to the Empire and
enabled to become the greatest of the colonies by
simply being let alone. In Australia and Tasmania,
the highest ideal of colonization that the Imperial
Government ever attained to was a penal settlement,
a ruthless despotism supported by bayonets and
ruling by the cat-o'-nine-tails ; a system so outrage
ous that the very troops who were sent to support
it revolted from it, and government officials connived
with convicts to bring about a better state of things
in defiance of the authorities at home.
The colonization of New Zealand was, happily,
the favorite and all-absorbing scheme of that same
statesman whose luminous and fearless mind had
influenced the Imperial Government to abstain, be
fore it was too late, from making a fatal mistake
with regard to Canada. It had been wittily said of
the famous Report of Lord Durham's Commission,
recommending self-government as the remedy for
disaffection in Canada, that " Edward Gibbon Wake
field thought it, Charles Buller Avrote it, and Lord
Durham signed it." In the case of NeAv Zealand,
EdAvard Gibbon Wakefield again made use of Lord
Durham's name and station ; but, in fact, he held
his own scheme in his own hands from beginning to
end, and never relaxed his grasp of it until he had
achieved it according to his own ideal. He not only
saved the colony from being first a native State — which

POLITICS AND LA WS. 197
meant neither more nor less than bloody chaos — and
secondly, a penal settlement ; but he insisted from the
very outset that it should not be at the mercy, or
under the incubus, of the blunderers and jobbers in
Downing Street at all. He demanded nothing short
of entire self-government, and he lived to sit in the
first colonial Parliament in the Southern Hemisphere.
Colonial parliamentary government as it iioav exists
in the Dominion of Canada, New South Wales, Vic
toria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and
the Cape of Good Hope, is simply the form of self-
government — varied according to local circumstan
ces — which Edward Gibbon Wakefield wrung from
the Empire for New Zealand. • The struggle — which
Avas waged both in the colony and in London — lasted
for ten years ; but that was not a long time for such
a struggle in those days. At this moment, even, the
colonists of Western Australia have been engaged
in a similar struggle, Avith a similar. object, for more
than tAvo years ; and according to the latest intel
ligence, self-government has been refused them on
the self-same arguments — the arguments of an idiot,
as they appear to any one acquainted with the colo
nies — which had to be overcome in the case of New
Zealand. It is astonishing that British statesmen
cannot even yet discern that self-government is the
secret of successful colonization, or that no colony
begins to be prosperous or progressive until the colo
nists obtain the entire control of their own affairs.
Would Great Britain herself be prosperous if she
were governed by an official department at St. Peters
burg or Pekin, Perth or Wellington ?

198 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
A Representative Constitution was granted to
New Zealand by Act of the Imperial Parliament, the
30th of June, 1852, and it came into force on the
Queen's birthday, 1854, when the first New Zealand
Parliament met at Auckland. This was practically
a counterpart of the British Constitution, the only
difference being that the Crown Avas represented by
a nominated Governor, and the members of the
Upper House of the Legislature were nominated for
life, instead of possessing hereditary rights as in the
House of Lords. In operation, the NeAv Zealand
Constitution was exactly the same as the British
Constitution, the powers of state being vested in a
Legislature, consisting of the Governor, represent
ing the Crown, the Legislative Council, correspond
ing to the House of Lords, and the House of
Representatives, corresponding to the House of
Commons. The Executive, as in England, were
Ministers of the Crown, holding seats in the Legis
lature and possessing, as an Administration, the
confidence of a majority of the House of Represen
tatives, who possessed the control of supply. The
Ministry Avere the advisers of the Crown in the
colony and responsible to Parliament for every act
of the CroAvn ; so that in New Zealand, as in Eng
land, the maxim was affirmed that " The King can
do no wrong." The only exception was with regard
to the native race, a special provision being made by
Avhich the colony Avas to grant a certain sum for
native purposes, Avhile the Governor was to act
independently of his Responsible Advisers in rela
tion to native affairs. This was one of those wrong--

POLITICS AND LA WS. 199-
headed steps which are often taken by the Imperial
Government under pressure from misguided humani
tarians, doubtless Avith the best intentions, but in
open defiance of political principles and of all the
teachings of experience. Its results Avere even more
disastrous to the natives whom it was designed to
o
protect than to the colonists whom it most unjustly
professed to restrain. It cost the Imperial Govern
ment a vast sum of money and the lives of many
brave men ; and it was finally abandoned in 1862, to
the infinite relief of all concerned. From that date,
the colonists have had unrestricted control of their
own affairs, and the results have amply justified the
paradoxical epigram that, " If ever liberty was a
failure in any country, it was because there was not
enough of it."
Apart from the Colonial Legislature already de
scribed, the first New Zealand Constitution made
provision for a federal organization of a unique
type, which Avas to some extent necessitated by the
scattered situation and independent character of the
settlements. The Colony was divided into six Prov
inces, three in each island, namely : Auckland, Tara
naki and Wellington in the North Island, and Nelson,
Canterbury and Otago in the Middle Island. Each
of these Provinces had a legislative and executive
organization of its own, the Superintendent, elected
by the whole body of parliamentary electors, repre
senting the Crown; the Provincial Council, elected
by the voters of the various provincial electoral dis
tricts, possessing full legislative powers with respect to
local affairs ; and the Provincial Executive, who were-

200 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
the advisers of the Superintendent, being responsi
ble to the Provincial Council. The Provincial sys
tem was an absurdity from the beginning, and it
would have been a mischievous absurdity, had not a
power been vested in the Governor — that is to say,
the General Government — of vetoing any or all Acts
of the Provincial Councils. It frequently happened
that the whole legislation of a long session of a Pro
vincial Council was thus wiped out before it had
done any harm. There came a time, however, when
the conflict between the General Government and
the Provincial Governments, both as to legislation
and as to finance, became very serious, and it was
obvious that the Provinces must sooner or later be
abolished. They were exposed to attack from within
and from without. Discontented localities clamored
for separation, and an 'Act having been passed to
meet this demand, the new Provinces of HaAvkes
Bay, Marlborough, Westland, and Southland were
created from outlying parts of Wellington, Nelson,
Canterbury and Otago respectively. Canterbury, —
where the Provincial system worked better than
anywhere else, perhaps, — only averted further disin
tegration by handing over to its fertile southern
portion the whole control of local public works as
well as a large share of the Provincial funds, mainly
consisting of the proceeds of land sales. Other
secessions were threatened ; and, meanAvhile, the
-Colonial Government were steadily overwhelming
or superseding the Provincial Governments in many
of their most important functions.
, The Public Works and Immigration Act of 1870,

POLITICS AND LA WS. 201
by which the Colonial Government took power to
borrow ten millions sterling on the credit of the
colony for constructing public Avorks and importing
population, without regard to Provincial boundaries,
virtually destroyed the raison d'itre of the Provinces,
and sealed their doom. They struggled on for a few
years longer; but it was plainly seen that the Public
Works scheme could never be carried out with these
ten cormorants tearing with beak and claws for a
division of the spoils; and in 1875 an Act was passed
for abolishing them utterly. An appeal to the coun
try only increased the majority in favor of the Abo
lition Act ; and the Provinces passed out of existence
without any signs of public discontent ; a conclusive
-evidence that they had outlived their usefulness.
It cannot be denied, however, that the Provincial
Governments did a great deal toward the develop
ment of settlement and the execution of public im
provements. Their necessities and their rivalries
were alike a byword ; yet their necessities made
them economical while their rivalries made them
energetic ; and the traveler in New Zealand to-day
sees the remains of their work all around him in
roads, railways, harbors, buildings, parks, hospitals,
and charities, colleges, museums, and schools, amply
sufficient to make the epitaph of the architect buried
under St Paul's applicable to them, "Si monumen-
tum quceris, circumspice."
Long before the Provinces were abolished, there
had been in existence a very useful system of local
government in the shape of municipalities and road
boards ; and, simultaneously with the abolition of the

202 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
Provinces, this was supplemented by a county system,
for levying local taxation for the cost of works of com
mon benefit to large areas comprising several road
districts. Both the County Councils and the Road
Boards are unpaid bodies, and are mainly composed
of practical settlers Avho discharge the functions of
local government very faithfully and capably.
In the first instance, the representation of the
people in Parliament in New Zealand was based on
a somewhat high property qualification ; but the
demand for an extension of the franchise growing
constantly greater, especially after the abolition of
the Provincial Councils, which had served as a safety
valve for political agitation, an Act was passed in
1879 which established what is equivalent to man
hood suffrage. Every man who owns real property
"of the value of ,£25, and every man who has resided
in the colony for twelve months, is entitled to vote.
The effect of this has been rather conservative than
otherwise, inasmuch as it has given large employers
of labor considerable influence at elections, which
they had not before. On the whole, the people of
the colony have shown themselves decidedly worthy
to exercise the franchise, and the high character of
the New Zealand Parliament for good order, de
corum, and capacity for business is unimpaired. The
conspicuously able and experienced men of the
world who founded the colony, or held the chief
place in its public councils during the early stages of
its history, are passing away, and few men of similar
talents are arising in their place. The House of
Representatives will soon consist almost entirely of

POLITICS AND LA WS. 203
born colonists, sons or grandsons of the first settlers,
whose education is necessarily somewhat contracted
and who naturally lack that strong individuality
which marks the heroic type of pioneers. But the
young generation are well principled and intensely
patriotic in their Avay ; and in some respects, possi
bly, their very want of the mercurial element or of
imagination in their political conceptions, may prove
a safeguard for the colony. They labor under one
great disadvantage, which must ahvays very seriously
affect the parliamentary politics of New Zealand, in
the triennial duration of Parliament which was sub
stituted in 1879 for the quinquennial term prescribed
by the original constitution — a step which has been
regretted by every man of sense in the colony ever
since. The number of the House of Representatives
was increased from time to time until it reached nine
ty-five, including four natives; but in 1887 an Act
was passed reducing the number to seventy-one at
the next general election.
It is a most noticeable and curious fact that, as re
gards their public men, the colonists still stick to the
pioneers, or those who immediately followed the pio
neers, and do not seem to place much confidence in
the capacity of the younger politicians to rule the
country. The present Premier, Sir Harry Atkinson,
who is the very type of a tough old settler of the
days of blue shirts and moleskins, was in the first
Parliament and was a Minister five-and-twenty years
ago. He has been at the head of the Government
five or six times during that period, and seems likely
to be there, with longer or shorter intervals, for the

204 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
rest of his life. He is a most able administrator, and
a man of unsullied character. The Seat of Govern
ment and of the Legislature was at Auckland until
1864, when it was moved to Wellington, as the nat
ural center of the islands, where it may now be
deemed to be established for all time.
The laws of New Zealand consist of the statute
law and common laAv of England, except in so far as
these have been modified by legislation within the
colony. That is to say, in every case where a law
has been made on any subject by the NeAv Zealand
Parliament, that is the law in force in the colony ;
but in all cases Avhere no law has been made on the
subject by the NeAv Zealand Parliament, then the
law of England is in force. The colonial code of
laws is now fairly complete, and in some branches it
has been most admirably consolidated ; but there not
unfrequently arise cases or points in the courts where
a decision of an English judge a century old, or a
statute of Charles the Second, or Elizabeth, is suc
cessfully pleaded. There was one famous instance
some years ago, Avhere two criminals obtained their
discharge on the strength of a statute of Henry the
Eighth which was afterward found to be totally
inapplicable to the case, ample legislative provision
existing in the colony.
To all intents and purposes, the laws of New Zea
land are the same as the laws of England. The
principles are the same, and even in details the col
ony follows the Mother Country very closely. For
example, that dubious statute, the Married Women's
Property Act, was adopted in New Zealand two

SIR HARRY ALBERT ATKINSON, K.CM.G.
Prime Minister of New Zealand.

POLITICS AND LA WS. 205
years after it had passed the Imperial Parliament ;
and even the Offenses against the Person Act, which
was only passed in England out of sheer panic, the
result of an agitation got up for interested purposes
by a sensational newspaper, would have been imme
diately adopted in New Zealand had it not been
passively resisted by the Government.
The judicial procedure is also strikingly like that
of England, including many of the abuses of the
English system which still exist and some which have
been swept away. On the whole, justice is well
administered in the colony, though the costs are
excessive. In criminal cases, it is safe to say, no
injustice is ever committed, unless on the side of
letting culprits off too lightly from a false sentiment
of mercy on the part of judges or jurors. Even this
tendency of Courts, however, has been systematized
in New Zealand in a manner which is well worthy of
the attention of other countries. An Act has been
passed, called the First Offenders Probation Act,
by which any prisoner found guilty of a first crime —
not being murder or a felony of the more infamous
kind — may be released on probation for a longer or
shorter period, at the discretion of the court. If
within that period the probationer relapses into
crime, or in any way abuses his liberty, he is
arrested and punished ; but if he takes advantage
of the opportunity to reform, he receives his
discharge at the expiry of his probation without
having seen the inside of a prison or come in
contact with criminals at all. The Act was laughed
at as a piece of sentimentalism at first ; and

206 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
the judges strenuously objected to it on the ground
that it threw on them an' undue share of personal
responsibility. But it has now been in operation for
three years, and its practical results have been so
satisfactory that all objections to it have passed
away. Out of a very large number of prisoners
released on probation, only an insignificant minor
ity have gone wrong again. The effect of the Act
is, in fact, on the one hand to spare the country a
heavy expense, and on the other to prevent first
offenders generally from becoming habitual crimi
nals. It sometimes happens that out of a long list
of convictions at the session of the Supreme Court,
not a single one results in a prisoner going to gaol ,*
but yet society is completely protected by the safe
guard of surveillance under the probation system.
The judges and magistrates of New Zealand are
men of very high character and personal dignity.
Until quite recently, the judges were invariably
chosen from amongst English lawyers, either prac
ticing in the colony or brought out specially ; but
on the last occasion of a vacancy occurring, the
Government ventured on an innovation and ap
pointed a young barrister who was called to the
Bar in the colony, and whose practice had been
confined to the colonial courts. The appointment,
though not well received at first, for the colonists
are decidedly conservative, has given great satisfac
tion, and the judges in future will probably be all
chosen from the local Bar, who have a deservedly
high name. The New Zealand courts are altogether
free from corruption. It is confidently believed that

POLITICS AND LA WS. 207
not a single instance of such a thing has ever
occurred in the higher tribunals ; whilst in the few
cases Avhere it has been suspected in the lower
courts, it has been made the subject of searching
inquiry and, if proved, of swift and exemplary pun
ishment. The people are essentially a law-abiding
people, and there is nothing they regard with more
solicitude than the purity and effectiveness of the
course of justice. There is no such thing in New
Zealand as Avhat is known in America as " pull."
The departmental administration of the Govern-
ment is of the old English type, highly centralized
and mechanical, conducted according to the strictest
rules of red tape, slow and patient, but, on the whole,
unquestionably able, irreproachably honest, and very
smooth and courteous. The Ministers give up
nearly all of their time to the personal direction of
their departments, all questions of any importance
being considered by the Minister and dealt Avith
under his own hand. The permanent heads of de
partments, however, are responsible and worthy
officials, men of education and good social standing,
who have held their place for many years — some of
them almost from the foundation of the colony —
and who virtually hold it for life or until they retire
on a pension or a commutation. Many attempts
have been made by Radical politicians to upset this
order of things ; but in vain. The tendency is rather
for temporary officials to become permanent than
for permanent officials to become temporary ; and
there are numerous instances of employes of the
Government nominally holding office from day to

208 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
day, who nevertheless have held it for many years
and are likely to hold it as long as they give satis
faction. The truth is, the New Zealand Radical is
usually found to be a good Conservative when he
comes to deal with the Civil Service.; and the most
revolutionary politicians that ever got into office in
the colony, soon saw the wisdom of letting the de
partmental officials alone.
This stability of public employment is of great
importance in a country where the Government dis
charge many functions for the public which, in other
countries, are left to private enterprise. In New
Zealand the Government do not concern themselves
merely with the preservation of order and the protec
tion of life and property. They own all the railways,
actually or prospectively — for they have power to
take over at any time the few lines that are owned by
private companies — and conduct them themselves as
public carriers, " the Queen" being the nominal pro
prietor, though the actual administration is in the
hands of three commissioners to whom Her Majesty's
powers are delegated. They also OAvn and conduct
all telegraphs and telephones. They construct all
the main public works of the colony, even including
some of the principal harbor works, roads, bridges,
culverts, water races, and they have intimate finan
cial and administrative relations with a multitude of
local public bodies having the sole or partial control
of lesser works. They are to a large extent the
people's bankers, and they carry on, moreover, two
businesses which have so direct a bearing on the
social conditions of the people that they deserve

POLITICS AND LA WS. 209
more than a passing word of notice here. These are
the Life Insurance Department and the Public Trust
Office. The New Zealand Government Life Insurance
Department was established in 1870, the first institu
tion of the kind in the world, and, in spite of a very
general opinion that it must inevitably be a failure,
it has been an unqualified success from the beginning.
By the end of 1888, — that is to say, in 18 years —
nearly 50,000 policies have been issued, the total
existing assurances at that time amounting to more
than ,£7,000,000. Three quinquennial investigations
have been made by English actuaries of the first
rank, and by their authority two divisions of surplus
have been made providing a reversionary bonus to
policyholders of ,£444,000 in all. There is said to
be nothing like this in the history of life insurance, but
the explanation that is given of it seems simple
enough. The Department offers an unique induce
ment to insurers, in the absolute guarantee by the
State of every policy issued. In a word, it is impos
sible for the office to fail. If an epidemic swept off
all the policy holders at once, or if the secretary
bolted to South America Avith all the funds, it would
not make any difference to the beneficiaries. The
Government would have to pay every claim in full on
presentation of proof of death, even if they had to
borrow the money in London to do it with,' or sell
half the public estate. On the other side of the
account, the Department is placed in a position of
exceptional strength by the fact of its insuring only
the lives of the people in New Zealand, the healthi-

210 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
est country on the surface of the globe. This it is
which has produced results that puzzled the actuaries
and were deemed incredible until they were proA'ed
on investigation and tested by experience.
There is a good story told, apropos of the healthi
ness of New Zealand, of a magistrate, noted for his
sense of humor, as well as for his testy temper, who
had had charge of one of the finest districts in Otago
for many years. Some official inquiries were being
made with a view to ascertaining the comparative
death rate in various localities, and this gentleman
received a circular letter, in common with others.
He indignantly replied that there Avas no death rate
in his district, the only people who had died there dur
ing his seventeen years of office being two strangers,
one of Avhom had been murdered and the other hanged
for the murder. When the facts, of which this
anecdote is a jocular echo, are taken into account,
it ceases to be surprising that the revenue of the
Government Insurance Department has risen from
£03,000 in 1875 to ,£268,000 in 1888, or that its
resen^e funds have swollen from ,£109,000 in the
former year to ,£1,400,000 in the latter. It is hard
to see where its operations are going to stop.
It must not be imagined, however, that the Gov
ernment enjoy a monopoly, or anything like a
monopoly of the business of life insurance. On the
contrary, the effect of the establishment of the
Department seems to have been to make the prac
tice of insuring so universal, that a number of private
companies have shared the benefit. Almost every
one, who is in any sort of position to do so, insures

POLITICS AND LAWS. 211
in New Zealand, as a provision for the family in case
of death, as an investment, or as a security for one
purpose or another ; a great many people who are
insured with the Government, taking out a policy in
a private company, or, perhaps, more than one, as
well ; and vice versd. The difference that the exist
ence of the Government Department makes is that
only thoroughly substantial private companies, doing-
business on very favorable terms for policy holders,
can hold their own in the colony ; for the reason that
there is absolute security in the Government Office,
and no one Avould think of having anything to do
with any company that is not, as they say, " as safe
as the Government." In short, instead of monopoly,
there is competition of the most salutary kind for all
concerned ; and the colonists enjoy the very best
facilities for insuring, whether they patronize their
own office or some other. Even one or two foreign
offices of the highest standing are firmly established
in friendly rivalry with the Department, notably the
famous Equitable Life Assurance Society of the
United States, and the New York Life Insurance
Company, both of which are in great favor among
the colonists, some of the foremost of whom are on
the local Boards.
The Public Trust Office of New Zealand is a
remarkable institution established in 1872 upon the
suggestion of Mr. E. C. J. Stevens, a thoughtful and
deservedly respected public man, to whose disinter
ested sagacity the colony is indebted for some of its
soundest measures. The business of the Public
Trust Office consists of the administration of intestate

212 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
estates, estates under will, trust estates of lunatics,
and trusts of all kinds ; and also of the management
of the property of absent heirs or devisees, and of
unoccupied lands of absent owners. The Public
Trustee, in fact, is the universal guardian, executor,
and agent, where other legal representatives are
wanting, or where for any reason it is found more
convenient to employ his services than those of
private persons. The advantages of the system are
that there is absolute safety for all property that
comes into the Public Trustee's hands for custody or
investment ; and that the exact amount of the costs
and charges is fixed and publicly known. Thus, on
the one hand, there is no fear of fraud or embezzle
ment, as to the capital, and on the other, there is no
wasting of the proceeds by extortion or muddle, and
no delay or misunderstanding as to payment of in
come. The Public Trustee, moreover, never dies,
resigns, or leaves the country, so that the endless
trouble and expense of a change of trustees or attor
ney is avoided. The Public Trust Office was not
very well understood at first, and it took four or five
years to get it thoroughly into working order. It
now, however, enjoys the entire confidence of the
people toward whom, or on whose behalf, it exer
cises functions of rapidly increasing magnitude and
importance. A time will probably come when the
practice of appointing personal executors or trustees
will fall into disuse, and when the Public Trustee will
be named as a matter of course in every will and
every deed of trust.
Some five years ago, a still bolder attempt was

POLITICS AND LA WS.

213

made to extend the principle that all functions are
properly the functions of government, which may be
exercised for the welfare of the people. The Min
istry of the day propounded to Parliament the theo
ry, and Parliament provisionally adopted it, that the
direct encouragement of trades and industries was
Avithin the province of government, if not by actually
establishing national workshops — of which, by the
bye, a tentative example actually exists in the Railway
workshops — at least by bringing into prominence the
results of private enterprise and affording facilities
for the producer and the consumer to come together.
To give effect to this proposition, a considerable sum
was voted for an Industrial Exhibition at Wellington,
confined to productions of the colony, which, if it
proved a success, was to be followed by similar ex
hibitions in all the chief centers of population. The
Government, in fact, were to hold an annual fair or
market at the public expense, with a view to making
the people acquainted with the productions and
resources of the different parts of their own country,
and thus stimulating enterprise, invention, industry,
and commerce. The result, however, was not en
couraging. The Industrial Exhibition held at Wel
lington' certainly showed that the colony had made
and was making wonderful progress in the industrial
arts; but it also showed, ipso facto, that there Avas
no occasion for governmental interference in matters
of purely commercial concern, and that any indus
trial competition held under official auspices was
apt to be a failure. The project was accordingly
dropped ; and when it was proposed later on to

-214 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
hold a grand exhibition at Dunedin of the arts, in
dustries, resources, and manners of New Zealand,
Australia, and the other countries and colonies of
the South Pacific, as a fitting celebration of the colo
ny's jubilee year, 1889, it was wisely determined
that the Government should have nothing to do with
the management. The exhibition, which is to be
opened in November next, has been organized by a
number of New Zealand colonists, after the model
of the London exhibitions of 185 1 and 1862, the
Government merely recognizing it as the official cele
bration of the jubilee and conducting the hospitali
ties of the colony regarding it. The consequence is
that all the arrangements for the exhibition are
being carried out with great energy ; and there is
no doubt that it will be one of the most interesting
gatherings of the kind ever held, something so en
tirely out of the common in many respects that it will
be well worth going round the world to see. It will
constitute, in fact, an epitome of the history of colo
nization in the Southern Hemisphere, and will cer
tainly demonstrate the fact that the trade and
industries of the vigorous young communities there
have got long past the stage when any artificial
encouragement might have been necessary or useful.
In a word, while the success of the New Zealand
Government in dealing with some social matters that
are elsewhere left to private enterprise is undeniable,
everything tends to show that in New Zealand, as
elsewhere, the less they interfere with commercial
matters the better.

X.
EDUCATION.
In former times, public education was left entirely
In thehands of the Provincial Governments, and whilst,
in some Provinces, it received most praiseworthy at
tention, in- others it was shamefully neglected. One
of the first and most beneficent consequences of the
abolition of the Provinces was the passing of the
Education Act in 1877, which has never since been
altered, but is likely to be the law for many years to
come. The principle of this admirable statute is
that it is the duty of the State to see that every
child receives the rudiments of a good education.
For the fulfillment of that duty it is enacted that
education shall be free, secular, and compulsory, so
that no parent may have any excuse or opportunity
for bringing up a child in ignorance. Ample finan
cial provision is made for this purpose, the total
expenditure on public education being now about
,£500,000 a year and increasing with the population.
For the administration of the Act, it is sought as
far as possible to enlist the help of the people
themselves, and, in fact, the Minister of Education
has almost a sinecure The householders in every
school district — and every locality is entitled to a
school, where there are more than twenty-five
children of school age — elect annually from among
215

216 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
themselves a committee who have the entire man
agement of the school. The Boards of Education,
in their turn, are elected by the School Committees
within each Education District — the Education Dis
tricts being large divisions of the colony correspond
ing pretty nearly to the old Provinces; — and these
Boards administer the whole expenditure and make
all appointments under the Act.
The system is, of course, denounced by the Roman
Catholic clergy, who wish to have the education of
their flock in their own hands, and who are constantly
agitating for subsidies for their own schools. The
agitation, however, is not formidable, and a large
proportion of Roman Catholic children attend the
public schools. Some years ago, Dr. Patrick Moran,
the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dunedin, stood for
Parliament with a view to advocating the claims of
his denomination ; but he only received an insignifi
cant minority of votes ; and since then no serious at
tack has been made on the secular system of public
education. There are a number of Colleges and High Schools
for pupils of both sexes, assisted by public funds ;
and these are rapidly superseding private schools.
Some of them are handsomely endowed from one
source or another, and as time goes on they may
well aspire to a status analogous to that of the great
English public schools.
The University of New Zealand is an examining
body, having power to grant degrees which rank
with those of Oxford and Cambridge. It has no
teaching function ; but there are University Col-

NELSON COLLEGE, MIDDLE ISLAND.

EDUCATION. 217
leges at Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin, which
are firmly established, each with a professional staff
of very high attainments and a large body of stu
dents. The colony already contains, then, all the elements
of a complete system of public education, a system
which is wonderfully advanced considering that the
country is only fifty years from barbarism and has
passed through long periods of bitter trial.

XI.
TAXATION.
It is remarkable that every country claims an
unenviable pre-eminence in taxation. It is quite a
settled thing in England that the British are the
most heavily taxed people in the world ; whilst in
America,' the " crushing burden " of taxation is a
never-failing topic for demagogues and for the party
who are out of office, whoever they may be. It is the
same in New Zealand. The people there are told so
often by politicians, newspaper writers, and others,
who are not responsible for the public finances, that
they are taxed more any other people, they have
come at last to believe it themselves, especially dur
ing a period of depression succeeding to a period
of extravagance and speculation. It is only true in
a limited and imperfect sense. Undoubtedly, the
amount of taxation per head is high in comparison
with that of most other . countries ; but the amount
of earnings out of which the taxation is paid is still
higher ; and so is the standard of public conve
nience demanded by the people. The mode of tax
ation is, in reality, much more open to objection
than the amount ; and there is undoubtedly room
for great reform in that respect. The bulk of the
taxation is raised by customs duties on imports,
under a tariff which is designed to tax, on the one
218

TAXATION. 219
hand, everything that can be made in the country,
and on the other, everything that must be imported
and is, therefore, calculated to yield a large revenue.
Between the two, feAv articles escape and those few
are insignificant in quantity. The tariff is commonly
called a 25 per cent, tariff, that is to say, the duties
amount to 25 per cent, one-fourth of the value of the
goods imported. Some of them amount, in fact, to a
good deal more ; but, as there are many lower duties
than 25 per cent., that may fairly be taken for an
average. Such a tariff would be deemed a Free Trade tariff
in America, where duties range from 50 to 100 per
cent, ad valorem. In England it would be deemed
ruinously Protective. In New Zealand, the Govern
ment claim that it is a happy medium between a Pro
tective tariff and a Revenue tariff. It has had the
effect of seriously checking importation, and to that
extent of injuring trade ; and the mercantile com
munity complain bitterly of its operation, while there
is no corresponding jubilation on the part of the
manufacturers. The tariff will probably be largely
modified as soon as the state of the Treasury will
admit of a remission of taxation. New Zealand is
essentially a maritime country, and it cannot afford
to place obstacles in the way of its sea-borne com
merce. It ought to take warning by the shocking
example of America, whose " patriotic " tariff has
driven the Stars and Stripes off the high seas and
pours ,£30,000,000 a year into the pockets of the
British and other nations who conduct the carrying
trade.

220 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
The next most important item of taxation is the
property tax, a statesmanlike impost based on the
enlightened principle of the taxpayer contributing
direct to the cost of government in proportion to his
ability to pay. The property tax — at present a
penny in the pound of the capital value of property,
but subject to be raised or lowered from year to
year — is levied on a triennial assessment of all
real and personal property actually owned by
the taxpayer, over and above all debts or liabili
ties and an exemption of ,£500. No one who
does not own property worth ,£500, clear of all
encumbrances, pays any property tax at all, whilst
all who do pay it pay in exact proportion to their
actual Avealth. No one, therefore, has any right to
complain, and, as a fact, no one does complain. No
other tax is so cheerfully or promptly paid as the
property tax; and none costs so little in collection.
It would be a vast relief to the country, if the whole
of the revenue Avere raised in this rational manner.
There is an excise duty on beer and, nominally, on
tobacco, but the beer duty produces a great many
prosecutions and not much revenue ; while the
tobacco duty practically prohibits the cultivation of
the plant for sale, as was no doubt intended.
Finally, there are stamp duties on receipts, prom
issory notes, and mercantile and legal documents of
all sorts ; and somewhat heavy succession duties.
The stamp duties are productive of revenue and are
cheaply collected ; but they are a great drawback to
business and settlement, and they weigh very heavily
on some of the most embarrassed classes of thepopu-

TAXATION. 22 r
lation. Nobody objects to the succession duties. It
is the wish of everybody to have as much succession
duty to pay as possible.
These are all the taxes levied by the Government
of the colony. The rest of the revenue consists of
payments for services rendered, such as receipts from
the railways, from the post and telegraphic offices,
court fees, and so on ; and of the proceeds of sales
or leases of Crown lands, mines, or forests. To these,
however, must be added the local taxes, rates levied
on property by the County Councils, Road Boards,
Harbor Boards, Borough Councils and other public
bodies, for local expenditure. In some parts of the
colony these are very heavy; and, though, of course,
there is something to show for them in the shape of
local works or improvements or facilities of some
sort, they frequently constitute an appreciable bur
den on the property-owner, and ought decidedly to
be taken into account in making choice of a locality
for settlement.
Of New Zealand generally it may be said that the
wealthiest classes do not feel the taxation, while the
poorer classes have little taxation to pay. Those on
whom the taxation falls most heavily are the in
debted class, because they have the responsibilities
of the rich, with the exigencies of the poor.

XII.
THE FUTURE OF THE COLONY.
The future is proverbially the heritage of the
young, and especially is it the heritage of young
countries. The colonists of New Zealand may well
look back with pride upon their country's short past ;
while the few survivors of its founders may sing their
Nunc dimittis with perfect satisfaction. If any man
in 1839 nad foretold that New Zealand would be in
1889 what it actually is, he would have been laughed
at for the wildest of visionaries. . So any one who is
bold enough to forecast the condition of the colony
in 1939 must expect to meet with little credence, but
to be looked on merely as a heated enthusiast. Yet
we know what has happened during the first fifty
years of the colony's existence ; and this book re
cords it. Why cannot we believe that the progress
of the colony in the future will be as great as it has
been in the past ? The overwhelming probability is
that it will be much greater, that is to say, that the
colony will progress, as it has been progressing, in
a constantly increasing ratio.
The first fifty years in the history of any new
country necessarily constitute its most trying period.
The fewness and poverty of its settlers, the isolation
of the settlements, the scarcity and costliness of
commodities, the perils or terrors of enemies or of
natural obstacles, the want of markets for produce, —

IN A MASTER'S HOUSE, CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CANTERBURY.

THE FUTURE OF THE COLONY. 223
all these causes and a hundred others, tend in the
aggregate to create at the outset, and for many years
afterwards, a sea of difficulties which might well
appal any but the stoutest hearts.
The colony enters upon its second half-century
free from them all. It is a common thing to hear
the heavy indebtedness of New Zealand spoken of
with alarm and reprobation, as if it were a burden
which the colony would never be able to stagger
under. The truth is the debt of NeAv Zealand to
day is a bagatelle, in proportion to its capacity for
bearing it, compared with the debt of the colony at
the time when the New Zealand Company had just
succeeded in establishing their settlements, forty
years ago. The worst financial difficulty the colony
could get into, under its existing conditions, would be
an easy and hopeful position compared to the diffi
culty it was in toward the close of the native wars
twenty years ago, when it seemed to be literally
bleeding to death. If, then, it came through those
times not only triumphantly, as to particular crises,
but with steady progress all the while — and no
such times can ever come again, — how blind to the
teaching of experience must those be who imagine
the colony can be seriously checked, in the full vigor
of its redundant youth, by temporary fluctuations in
the price of its exports, or by any pecuniary muddle
in Avhich it may be involved for a few years by the
adoption of a speculative policy of public works.
These afe mere incidents in the history of any
country and they have little or no effect on the
general tenor of its career throughout a period of

224 NEW ZEALAND AFTER FIFTY YEARS.
half a century. What should be looked to in the
case of New Zealand are the main causes which
have influenced its past and which are operating
more actively than eA'er to influence its future. These
are its situation and natural features which make it
the ideal home of an English people — the most un
mixed Anglo-Saxon community outside of Great
Britain — its marvelous productiveness, the full ex
tent of Avhich is as yet only vaguely discerned ; and
its total freedom from any circumstances which can
interfere with the development of its wealth or the
increase of its population. It is the strongest wish
of those who love it best, that New Zealand may
never be flooded by a promiscuous immigration of
the dregs of old countries ; or attract such a greedy
rush of capital as to make it a mere gambling hell of
speculators and monopolists. But it is their firm be
lief also, founded on the data of the past and present,
and on all reasonable calculations of the future, that
it is destined within the next half-century to be the
most populous and prosperous of all the British
colonies in the Southern Hemisphere. They fore
see in it the habitation of millions of law-abiding,
truth-telling, God-fearing people like the British,
from whom they are sprung and with whom they have
all in common save the place of abode. Caelum non
animum mutant. They predict for those people a
well-being and happiness, resembling in their kind
what are deemed Avell-being and happiness at Home,
but exceeding them in degree as the skies of New
Zealand exceed the skies of Great Britain in bright
ness.

INDEX.

A.
Abolition of Provinces . ..... 201
Aborigines . 101
Acclimatization . . . . -87
Administrative departments ... . . 207
Adventures, Wild .... ... 149
Agricultural population . .... 158
Akaroa, Ngaitahu Deed signed at ... 13
Alps, Southern . . . . . 6t
Alluvial mining . . . ... 165
Apteryx . . . • • 73
Atkinson, Sir Harry .  203
Auckland, North of . . .... 121
Australia, Drought in ...... 178
Aweto .... .... 81
B.
Banks . . .  19°
Bees, Bumble, introduced ... 90
Beggars . . . ¦ 41
Beverage, National . . . . ¦ 37
Bible translated into Maori . . . . . . . 117
Birds .... ... 73
Bluett, initiates grain trade ..... 182
Board and lodging ....... 38
Book on grasses ......•• 143
Boar, wild . . .... 84
Boyd, wrecked at Wangaroa ..... 9
Buckland, Frank, notice of Aweto  84
Buller, Sir Walter .... . . 80
225

226 INDEX
Burning off bush . .  141
Bush, Australian  140
Bush, Cost of living in  146
Bush, New Zealand  139
Bush settlers . . ... . . . . .139
Butter  134
C.
Cabbage tree . .  98
Campbell Islands ......... 2
Carlyle, Thomas . . . . . . . .172
Carnivorous parrot . . . . . . . -77
Caterpillar, Vegetable . . . . . . . 81
Charitable institutions ........ 42
Chatham Islands ........ 2
Chatham Island Lily ...... -94
Checks, Use of ........ 191
Children and parents . . . . 51
Chinese .......... 31
Christchurch, Cathedral damaged by earthquake . . -65
Christmas tree ........ 95
Classes, Equality of . . . . . . . 150
Clematis ....... . . 91, 92
Clianthus ......... 93
Clothing of colonists ....... 39
Clover, Red, impregnated by bees . . . . -9°
Coal miners ....... . 169
Coal trade . . . . . . . . . .185
Cockatoos or cottage farmers . . . . . 159
Colleges and High Schools . . . . . . .216
Colonists, Clothing of ..... . 39
Colonists, Dwellings of ....... 32
Colonists, Food of ........ 35
Colonists, Holidays of  .46
Colonists, Incomes of ....... 44
Colonists, Liquors of . . . . . . -37
Colonists, Morality of ....... 53
Colony, absence of great cities . -27

INDEX. 227
Colony, as it is . . . . . . . . 26
Colony, Progress of after war  18
Colony, Future of . . ... . . .222
Commerce and trade ...... 175
Commodities, Imported ... . 187
Constitution representative . . . . . .198
Cook, Captain, lands at Poverty Bay .... 7
Cook, Captain, several visits to New Zealand . . 7
Cook, Mount  . 61
Cordylinum ........ 98
Cornish miners . . ... 163
Courts of Justice . . .... 205
Crane, White . ....... 79
Crime, Diminution of . ..... 30
Crow ....... .79
Cuckoo ......... 79
Currency . . . . . . . . .191
D.
Dairy farmers ... .... 133, 136
Dairy produce  • .184
Deer, Red and fallow' .  85
Departmental administration  207
Dinornis .... ... 73
Domestic characteristics . .... 50
Drought in Australia ..... .178
Duff Missionary ship  IJ6
Durham, Lord, Chairman of New Zealand Company . 12
Durham, Lord, Colonization Company formed under . .11
Dwellings of colonists  32
E.
Earthquakes, Amusing stories of  64
Earthquakes and volcanoes  5 6
Earthquakes, great, of 1848 and 1855  63
Earthquake, singular, of 1888  65
Earth tremors . . . •  62

228

INDEX.

Education Egmont, Mount
Equality of classes
Exhibition, Dunedin, 1889 .
Exports and imports
Export of gold
Export of wool
Exports, where to
Exports 1856 to 1869
Expenses of living in the bush

215
. 615°
. 214 174
• 177177
. 176 20
. 146

Farmers, Cottage
Fauna and flora
Fenton, Judge, ethnologist
Ferns ....
Financial companies .
First offenders, probation
Flax, New Zealand .
Flora and fauna
Flowers, Acclimatized
Flowers, Wild
Food of colonists
FranchiseFreeholders, Proportion of
Frozen meat trade
Fuchsia ....
Furniture of houses

!59 68
n 1
• 97
189
. 205
94, 122

999135
202 33
128 95 34

Game, Acclimatized .
Gear Meat Company
Goats, Wild
Gold export .
Gold miners
Gold mining .
Government, Functions of

85
133 85
177163160
208

INDEX. 229
Government, Imperial, failure to colonize . . . .195
Government, Local ....... 201
Government, Parliamentary . . 195
Government, Provincial, abolished .... 201
Government, First attempt to establish . . . .10
Government, Queen's, conflict with New Zealand Company 13
Government, Seat of . . . 204
Grasses .... . ... 143
Ground parrot .... . 76
Gum diggers ... ..... 126
Gum, Kauri  125
H.
Haast, Sir Julius von . . . . . . . . 72
Hatters on goldfields . . .... 165
Hawaiki  109
Hawkes Bay  128
Hector, Sir James . . . . . • • .110
He mea hi no Mai  7
Heron .... . • 79
Hipialis virescens . . • 81
Hobson, Captain, appointed Lieutenant Governor . . 13
Holidays of colonists . . • • • 46
Hongi, goes to England ...... 10
Hongi, made Justice of the Peace  10
Hongi's bloody conquests  10
Hospitals . . .....-¦ 42
Hotels and boarding-houses  38
Housefly . .  88
Huia ...  .78
I.
Imperial Parliament, gives attention to New Zealand 1 1
Imports and exports . . . • • • • • J74
Incomes of colonists .  43
Insects  8o
Industrial exhibitions  2I3
Intercolonial trade  l8°

230 INDEX.
Internal trade ......... 193
Irish miners ........•• 163
Iron ore . . . . . . . . • • l85

Jubilee Exhibition
Judges and magistrates
Judicial procedure

214 206205

K.
Kaikomako tree  • • 93
Kaka  77
Kakapo .......... 76
Karaka tree ....... .110
Kauri gum . . . . . . . . . . 125
Kaurehe ...... . . 72
Kea  77
Kendall, Missionary, appointed Resident Magistrate . . 10
Kermadec Islands ........ 2
Kiore  '  .68
Kiore, Strange migration of ...... 69
Kiwi .  75
Konini  • • 95
Kororareka, Meeting at  .11
Kowhai, Scarlet ........ 93
Kowhai, Yellow  • ¦ 93

Labor, Traveling ......

. J53

Land, Disposal of, at different periods

• '9

Land, early transactions .....

M

Land, Maori ideas of titles to

• 15

Land, purchased on long terms

144

Land transfer ......

• 32

Life Insurance department ....

. 209

Life Insurance offices .....

211

Lily, Chatham Island .....

¦ 94

INDEX. 231
Lily, Mount Cook  92
Lily, Shepherd's ......... 92
Liquors of colonists ....... 37
Lizards ......... -7°
Local government ...... 201
Local taxation . . . . . . . . .221
Lunatic asylums ...... .42
M.
Maori people .......... 101
Maoris, Antiquity of . . . . . . . . 103
Maoris, Ethnology of . . . . . . .111
Maoris, Future of . . . . . . 118
Maoris, Moral and intellectual character of . . . . 113
Maoris, Origin of ..... . m
Maoris, population at different periods . . . 117
Maoris, present condition .... 118
Maoris, Stature of ..... . . 112
Maoris, Tasman's account ...... 6
Maoris, Troubles with . . . 14
Maori wars ..... . . 15
Magistrates and judges .... . 206
Mammals .... .... 68
Marsden, Rev. Samuel's first sermon  116
Marsden, Rev. Samuel, sent to the Bay of Islands . . 10
Massacre Bay ... ..... 5
Massacres and outrages ... ... 9
Mai  .... 8, 109
Meat, Frozen . .  128
Mercantile houses  l88
Middle Island  2
Middle Island, sovereignty assumed ... 13
Middle Island, purchased from natives . . . . 13
Minerals  l85
Miners ...  l6°
Mining, Alluvial  • l65
Mining, Coal  169-171
Mining, Quartz  l62

232

INDEX.

MissionariesMoa
Moa, Antiquity of
Moa hunters
Moordenaars Bay
Morality of colonists
MoriorisMountain parrot .
Mount Cook
Mount Egmont
Myosotis gigantea
Myrtle, Crimson .
Mythical animals

"5 73
io5
107 7
53
101 77
61
61 9494 72

N.
Napoleon of New Zealand  10
Narcissus, Wild ......... 100
Native State, Attempt to establish . . . . .11
Nelson, settlement formed . 14
New South Wales, boundaries extended to include New
Zealand . ... ... 12
New South Wales, penal settlement founded . 8
New Zealand, Ancient names of ... . .8
New Zealand, area and topography ... 4
New Zealand Company, Charter granted to . . . -13
New Zealand Company's fleet arrives ... 12
New Zealand Company formed .... .12
New Zealand, contrasted with Australia ... 3
New Zealand, created separate colony . . . .13
New Zealand, Discovery of .... 5
New Zealand Exhibition . . . . . . .214
New Zealand, geographical situation and description . 2
New Zealand Government Insurance ..... 209
New Zealand, how named ...... 6
Ngaitahu Deed ......... 13
Nicholson Port, taken possession of . . . . . 12
Nikau palm ........ -97
Norfolk Island, branch penal settlement .... 8

INDEX.

233

Norfolk Island, New Zealanders kidnapped for
North Island .......
North of Auckland 

O.

Orphanages .
Otter, dubious

9 2
121

43 72

Palm 
Parental relations
Paradise duck .
Parliament, Character of
Parliament, Duration of
ParrotsParrot's Bill flower
Parson Bird ....
Phormium tenax
Pigeon, Wood
Pigs, Wild 
Pohutakawa ....
Politicians . . . .
Politics .....
Pomaderris Tainui
Poor relief ....
Population 1854, 1869
Population of towns
Population, Occupation of
Population, White
Poverty Bay, Cook lands at
Primroses, Self-sown
Production of wealth
Property tax ....
Public Education
Public Trust Office
Provincial system
Public Works Policy
Public Works Policy, Effects of
Pukeko .....

97
• 5i 79
. 202 203
76, 77
93
• 78
94
79
84
• 95
203
. i94no
. 42 18
. 29
30
120 7
. 100 45
. 2202I5
. 211 199 22 23
¦ 79

234 INDEX. Q.
Quartz mining  162
R.
Rabbits  85
Railways  193
Rangitoto  60
Rangihaeta and Raparaha  .16
Rangiora tree ......... 93
Ranunculus .......... 92
Rata  94
Rauparaha and Rangihaeta ...... 16
Reformatories ........ 43
Religion respected ........ 30
Representation, Basis of ...... 202
Representative constitution . . . . . .198
Revenue, 1854, 1869  . 19
Roman Catholic missions . . . . . . .116
Rotomahana drained ....... 59
Ruapehu  57
Ruatara, Hougi and Koro-Koro made Justices of the Peace 10
S.
Salmon, Efforts to introduce  86
Schools and colleges  216
Self-government ........ 195
Settlement, Dispersion of . . . . . 29
Shearers .......... 153
Sheep-farmers . . . . . . . . -152
Shepherds ......... 152
Shipping  191
Shipping companies ...... 192
Society, State of . ,  -5°
Southern Alps  . 61
Sphseria Robertsii  81
Staaten Land  5
St. Albans, Duke of  129

INDEX. 235
Stamp dutie.s ......... 220
Station life ....  150
Steel sand . . . . . . . . .185
Stewart Island ......... 2
Stoats and weasels ........ 85
Sutherland Fall  149

Taniwha . . . . . . . . . 72
Tasman, Abel Jansen, discovers New Zealand . . 5
Tasman attacked by natives ... 6
Tasman, extract from journal ... . 5
Tasman leaves New Zealand ... . 7
Tarawera, Eruption of . . -59
Tatoo, Custom of . . . 113
Testament, New, translated . . . . . 117
Te Wahi Pounamu . .  8
Three Kings discovered arid named . . .7
Tohunga ..... ... 116
Tariff . . . ...'.. 219
Tariffs, Hostile .... . . .188
Taxation ... . .218
Taxation, Local . . ... . 221
Tax property  22°
Toi-toi  • 94
Tongariro ... ... 56
Towns, Population of  28
Trade and commerce . ... 175
Trade, Sea-borne  186
Trade, Internal .... 193
Trade, Shipping ... . . . 191
Tree ferns ......¦• 97
Tregear, Edward, ethnologist ... in
Trout, Acclimatization of ... • ¦ 87
Trustee, Public  ¦ 2I2
Tuatara  -7°
Tui  78

236 INDEX. u.
Unemployed .......... 46
V.
Van Diemen, Anthony, Governor of Batavia ... 5
Vegetable caterpillar ........ 81
Volcanoes and earthquakes . .... 56
W.
Wahanui, Maori chief . . . . . . .112
Waiapu, first Bishop of . . . . . . .117
Wairau massacre ....... 16
Waitangi, Treaty of ... ... 13
Wakefield, Captain Arthur, killed at the Wairau . 16
Wakefield, Colonel, purchases the Middle Island . 13
Wakefield, Colonel William, takes possession ... 12
Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, forms New Zealand Company . 12
Warewarengi, Tasman makes the coast .... 5
Wars, Effect of on colony . . 18
Wars with the Maoris ... 16
Wealth, Production of . . .... 45
Weasels and stoats ...... -85
Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company . . . 139
Wellington founded . . . . . . • . 12
Wellington, great earthquake ...... 63
Wellington Refrigerating Company ..... 133
Wesleyan Missions ....... 116
Weka ......... 75
Weta  80
Wheat export . ...... 178
White crane . . . • • ¦ 79
White Island . • • • • • 57
Wild boar . .  84
William the Fourth, petitioned for protection of Maoris n
Williams, William . . . . . . . .117
Wood pigeon . . ...... 79
Wool, export . . . . . . . . .117

NEW ZEALAND LAND.

GENERAL AREAS OF THE COLONY.

The total area of New Zealand is sixty-six million acres. Of this
nineteen millions have been sold or disposed of in education and other
public reserves ; thirteen millions belong to the Aborigines, or to the
Europeans who have purchased from them ; and thirty-four million
acres of Crown lands still remain for disposal. Of the latter, fifteen
millions are grass or fern country, ten millions forest, and nine millions
barren mountain tops, lakes, and worthless country.
The survey of, and road formation through, Crown lands is continu
ally in progress, preparing lands for settlement, of which there are
always blocks open for selection.
The forest lands are principally in the North Island. The usual
manner of dealing with them is for the settler to fall the trees in the
winter, and burn off in summer, sowing the grass immediately after ; in
this way the grass is ready for stock the next spring. The cost of the
whole operation varies from £\ to £5 an acre, and the carrying capacity
of the land so treated is from two to four sheep per acre all the year
round. The open grass lands of the Middle Island are usually held on pas
toral leases hereafter explained.
One of the principal features of the land system of New Zealand is
the variety of tenure which is offered to the choice of the intending
settler. Agricultural land may either be bought for cash or on deferred pay
ments, running over fourteen years, or it may be taken on perpetual

NEW ZEALAND LAND.
lease, with right of acquiring the freehold,) the purchase-money bearing
interest at five per cent., payable in half-yearly instalments.
It is accordingly open to each person to decide the tenure that will
suit him best.
The land is classified into first and second class. The price of first
class is twenty shillings per acre and upwards, and of second class from
five to twenty shillings, according to quality or situation.
In the case of two or more persons applying for the same piece
of land on the same day, the right of occupation is determined by lot
among the applicants, there being no increase by competition on the
price at which the land was offered.
In the case of pastoral land the same rules hold good where the land
is offered for sale. But generally, pastoral land is offered on lease only.
Under the small grazing run system a lease for twenty-one years
may be had of areas not exceeding 20,000 acres each, with right of
renewal for a second similar term, and with full valuation for all
improvements, should the tenant not re-acquire the lease.
For areas of pastoral country, usually of larger extent than 20,000
acres, designated runs, the tenure is for any term not exceeding twenty-
one years.
On the expiry of lease, compensation for improvements, not exceed
ing three years' rental, is payable by the incoming to the outgoing ten
ant, should the latter not become the lessee for a second term.
The leases of pastoral land either as small runs or runs, are put up to
auction at upset rentals of from three half-pence per acre to one shilling
or more, according to value, and after being once offered by auction
without sale, they may be open for application at the upset rent.

CONDITIONS OF PURCHASE.

If for cash, immediate payment of one-fifth, and the remaining four-
fifths within thirty days after the time of sale.
If on deferred payments, the price is paid in twenty-eight equal
instalments, payable one each on the first of January and July of each
year for the fourteen years.

NEW ZEALAND LAND.
There are also conditions of residence and improvements.
Residence on the land by the purchaser must begin within six
months of issue of license, and continue for six years. But under certain
conditions this can be shortened, and in the case of land wholly or
mostly covered with forest, may be dispensed with altogether.

IMPRO VEMENTS.

Rural : First-Class. — If open land, must bring into cultivation not less
than one-twentieth the first year, one-tenth the second year, and within
four years must have cultivated one-fifth, and within six years, in addi
tion to the cultivation of one-fifth, have effected permanent improvements
to the value of £i per acre, or the whole of the improvements may be
effected at any time, and the title obtained.
The term "substantial improvements of a permanent character,"
means and includes reclamation from swamps, clearing of bush or scrubby
cultivation, planting with trees or live hedges, the laying-out or cultiva
tion of gardens, fencing, draining, making roads, sinking wells or water-
tanks, constructing water-races, or in any way improving the character
or fertility of the soil, or the erection of any building. This definition of
the term improvements applies to all classes of land where improvements
are required by the Crown as part of the contract.
" Cultivation " means the clearing of land for cropping, or clearing
and laying down with artificial grasses.
Rural : Second-Class. — Must effect substantial improvements to the
value equal to ten per cent, of the value of the land within one year
from the date of the license, another ten per cent, within the second
year, and a third ten per cent, before the end of the sixth year.
If on perpetual lease, as already stated, the rent is five per cent, on
the purchase-money. The conditions of residence and improvements
are in all respects the same as are required on deferred payments. This
system offers peculiar advantages to the settler of limited means, as it
allows the whole of the purchase-money to remain at interest at five per
cent., and leaves his capital free to improve the land.

NEW ZEALAND LAND.
No person, on any of these conditions of purchase, can acquire in the
whole a greater area than 2640 acres in all.
Further information regarding the Crown lands, and the blocks open
at the time for sale or selection, will be found in the " Crown Lands'
Guide," copies of which can be obtained from the Agent-General of New
Zealand, at 7, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, London.
G. F. RICHARDSON,
Minister of Lands.
Land Office,
Wellington, New Zealand.

MINING.

In the Middle Island an area of 20,240 square miles is more or less
auriferous, the principal localities "being the districts of Otago and
Westland. In the North Island the Coromandel Peninsula, Thames and Te
Aroha districts, comprising an area of 1175 square miles, are also
auriferous. The value of gold produced by the colony from 1st January, 1853, to
1st January, 1889, is £45,000,000 sterling. From silver, copper, anti
mony, manganese, coal, Kauri gum, etc., £7,000,000 sterling.
Over the entire area of auriferous country the possession of a miner's
right, which costs ten shillings a year, entitles the holder to prospect,
and he can have the exclusive right to a certain portion of alluvial
ground at a nominal rental, or a lease for quartz-mining of sixteen acres
at a yearly rental of ten shillings an acre.
For sluicing purposes, the right of cutting water-races and diverting
water to Crown lands is secured to the miner on payment of a nominal
fee for registration.
The possession of a miner's right also gives the right to occupy a
residence area on Crown lands of one acre.
In cases where any unusual difficulty has to be overcome, or large

NEW ZEALAND MINING.
expenditure incurred, there is power to grant special claims of larger
areas than is stated above.
Coal deposits in payable quantities are worked in many districts in
both islands.
On the west coast of the Middle Island, at Greymouth and Westport,
there are extensive collieries at work on valuable bituminous coal, which
is unsurpassed in the world for stearn, smithy, and gas purposes. The
other qualities of coal are principally pitch, brown, and lignite, which
are worked extensively for local and locomotive purposes in the Otago,
Canterbury, Nelson, and Auckland districts.
The annual output from the coal mines progresses from year to year,
and in 1888 it was 558,622 tons. ¦
The coal deposits belong generally to the Crown, and leases are
obtained for terms of years, from twenty-one to sixty-three years, on
payment of a royalty generally of sixpence a ton, the lessee being under
obligation to have definite minimum outputs each year.
Silver, copper, tin, lead, antimony, manganese, and mixed minerals
are worked in various localities, although as yet on a small scale; not
so much because of any lack of raw material as by the difficulty of
successfully treating what are known as low grade or refractory ores.
Two large reduction works are now being erected in the colony for
the treatment of this class of ore.
G. F. RICHARDSON,
Minister of Mines.
Mines Office,
Wellington, New Zealand.

Thermal Springs and Natural Scenery,
NORTH ISLAND, HOT LAKES DISTRICT,
Government Sanatoriutn and Bathing Establish
ment, at Rotorua, in the Provincial
District of Auckland.

This Institution has been established by the New Zealand Govern
ment — not as a charitable, but as a National institution — for the purpose
of affording invalids from any part of the world the opportunity of
availing themselves of the curative properties of the remarkable and
famous hot springs of Rotorua,
Patients suffering from chronic, articular, and muscular rheumatism,
gout, rheumatic-gout, skin disease', sciatica, lumbago, neuralgia, nervous
exhaustion, or brain fog, diseases peculiar to women, and tardy con
valescence from acute diseases, may rely upon obtaining immense relief,
and in the majority of cases a complete cure.
Extensive improvements have recently been made in the bathing
accommodation in order to secure the comfort and convenience of
invalids. The grounds are tastefully laid out with flower gardens, lawn tennis,
and bowling greens, fountains, rustic seats, etc.. etc. Each patient
enjoys the comfort of a private bedroom which, with the sitting-rooms
and dining hall, are lofty and well ventilated. ,
The cuisine is ample, and regulated to suit the necessities of each
case. The terms are £1 per week, payable in advance, and include board,
lodgings, baths, medical attendance and medicines.
Provision is also made whereby the medical resident can receive into
his private residence a limited number of patients, who thus enjoy all
the comfort and convenience of home life with constant medical super
vision. Invalids wishing to avail themselves of the advantage of the above
are desired to communicate in the first instance with the Resident
Medical Superintendent.

THERMAL SPRINGS.
All baths are available to all comers, with or without medical advice,
at a uniform rate of one shilling for single bath, or six shillings per
dozen. There is also ample hotel and boarding-house accommodation
at tariffs varying from thirty shillings to seventy shillings per week.
Among the more popular springs of the district are the following :
THE PRIEST'S BATH.
This is a strongly acid, aluminous, sulphur water, acting as a power
ful skin stimulant, the immediate effects of which are to redden the
skin, and produce a feeling of exhilaration and refreshment, contrary to
the usual relaxing influence of the ordinary hot bath. This water is sup
plied to four public and fourteen private baths. Hot and cold showers
and douches are provided, and comfortable enclosed dressing-rooms.
MADAME RACHEL'S BATH.
This celebrated spring is a saline water with silicates, and has an
alkaline reaction ; it is supplied to eight private and two public baths.
No greater luxury can be conceived than bathing in this remarkable
water. It produces a delicious sense of bien §tre, and communicates a
soft, velvety feeling to the skin. The water is also used internally for
its beneficial action on the kidneys.
THE BLUE BATH.
This is the largest natural warm swimming bath in the Southern
Hemisphere. It is sixty-four feet long by twenty-four feet in width, and
varies in depth from four feet six inches to three feet. This is the great
pleasure bath of the district, and affords rheumatic invalids the means of
taking painless exercise, which they highly appreciate.
THE SULPHUR VAPOR BATH.
This is a natural hot vapor, highly charged with sulphur gases, con
ducted in a properly constructed chest, in which the patient sits, while
nascent impalpable sulphur is constantly deposited on the skin.
THE ELECTRICAL DEPARTMENT.
This Department is replete with the most modern appliances for
carrying out the various forms of electrical treatment in their entirety.
The galvanic bath is found a valuable adjunct to the usual treatment in
cases of rheumatism, neuralgia, and general debility.
The district in which these baths are situated contains a gigantic
system of geysers, boiling intermittent fountains, solfataras, basins, and
terraces, the accumulated gift of ages of salicious deposits from the

THERMAL SPRINGS.
evaporation of the overflowing waters, and is of easy access by steamer,
rail, and coach from .Auckland, Tauranga, or Napier.
In the North Island there is also a well-appointed bathing establish
ment at Te Aroha, about six hours' rail distance from Auckland, situ7
ated on the Thames River at the base of the famous ," Te Aroha," or
" Mountain of Love," from which the town and district take their
names. in the Middle Island at Hanmer Plains, about ninety miles north from
Christchurch, there are hot sulphur springs celebrated for their curative
properties, over which bathing houses have recently been erected by the
Government. The elevation is 1300 feet above the sea, and the district is accessible
by rail for seventy, miles from Christchurch, and coach for the remaining
twenty miles.
There are also the Southern Alps, a chain of high mountain peaks
running close along the west coast the entire length of the island.
Mount Cook, the dominant peak, has an altitude of 12,349 feet.
From its eternal snowfields stream down glaciers, far surpassing in
extent and magnificence their European congeners ; while lower down
the beds of the ancient glacier-extensions are now occupied by the
PuVnki. Wanaka, Whakatipu, Te Anau, and other lakes, which lie with
in the eastern recesses of the great range, and Milford, George, and the
other sounds or fiords penetrate the western side from the sea.
These lakes and sounds are long and narrow, ranging from a few
miles to fifty miles in length, and of a breadth generally from one to
three miles. They are all of great depth, and surrounded by snow
capped mountains rising to five and ten thousand feet.
The natural scenery revealed to the traveler in these regions is
of great sublimity and grandeur. Much of it as' yet has been but rarely
visited. The Sutherland Falls on the Arthur River, flowing into Milford
Sound, are 1904 feet high, and so rank with the highest waterfalls of the
world. The Union Steam Shipping Company occasionally afford travelers
the opportunity of seeing the West Coast Sounds by causing one of
their weil-appointed fleet to make the round of the principal sounds on
their voyages between Melbourne and New Zealand.
The interior lakes can be reached by rail or coach, and on Whakatipu,
Te Anau, and Wanaka there are steamers and boats.
H. J. H. ELIOTT,
Under Secretary,
General Crown Lands Office,
Wellington, New Zealand.

THE

Public Trust Office
OF NEW ZEALAND.

THIS OFFICE was established by the " Public Trust Office Act, 1872," since which time
its duties and functions have been greatly extended by the Amending Acts of 1873 and
1876, and by the operation of various Statutes. '
I. The Public Trustee is charged with the due administration of the Estates of all persons
•who may die Intestate : —
1st. Where no relatives are known, or who are known to reside out of New Zealand.
2d. Where the person entitled by law to take out Letters of Administration declines
or neglects to make application to the Court therefor within due time
after the death.
Where the Public Trustee administers the duty of realizing and collecting the estate devolves
upon him, as also of the payments of its liabilities, and the ultimate distribution of the residue
amongst the next of kin. A list of all Intestate Estates, the administration whereof has-been
assumed by the Public.Trustee within any calendar month, is published in the New Zeala?id
Gazette early in the following month, and is forwarded to the Agent-General in London, at
whose office it may be inspected.
Next of kin, in forwarding claims for the residue, or a share thereof, should enclose proofs
¦of kinship; the required proofs vary according to circumstances. Claimants residing out of
Wellington are recommended to consult a solicitor ; much valuable time will thereby be saved.
N. B — The above must be supported by such usual notarial and other attestations as
would enable them to be tendered as evidence before a Court. Unless otherwise specially
requested, all shares of residue will be remitted to the Agent-General for the Colony in London,
and by him paid to the parties severally entitled to receive them, on their furnishing hirr with
proofs of identity. Under this system no Power of Attorney will be required, but the next of
kin of foreigners, if residing abroad, are recommended to forward with the necessary proofs of
kinship a Power of Attorney in favor of the Consul of the country to which deceased belonged.
This course (in this class of cases) will be found more direct and convenient than the remittance
through the Agent-General in London, and a Power of Attorney becomes necessary, as a Consul
as such cannot give valid receipts for any distributive shares of residue.
II. The Public Trustee is charged with the execution of the wills of such persons as may
appoint him Executor by their last wills or codicils thereto. The State offers an absolute
.guarantee against any loss of funds by peculation or dishonesty on the part of the Public
Trustee or his officers. "
III. Subject to the provisions of The Public Trust Office Acts, present Trustees, Execu
tors or Administrators may transfer the trusts, which are being administered by them, to the
Public Tiustee, and thus relieve themselves of the burthen of the administration thereof.
Hence Trustees residing in England, America and elsewhere, holding moneys for the benefit of
• persons who have emigrated to New Zealand, may not only relieve themselves of the responsi
bilities of the trust, but as the rate of interest obtainable in New Zealand exceeds the English
Tate, will greatly augment the income of the beneficiaries by so doing. Before any transfer of
trust can be entertained, 'the trust deed or any authenticated copy thereof must be forwarded
to the Public Trustee with full particulars of the trust property, together with the consent of
the Trustees to such transfer, duly attested.
Intending Testators and Settlers should bear in mind:—
1st. That the Public Trustee in his corporate capacity NEVER DIES, NEVER
LEAVES THE COUNTRY, and NEVER BECOMES INCAPACI
TATED ; thus, by his appointment, the expense of fresh appointments of
Trustees consequent on death, change of abode, or mental or bodily infirmity,
is altogether avoided.
2d. That all proposed investments are considered by a Board of Officers, ensuring
careful consideration of all securities offered.
3d. That punctuality and promptitude in the remittance of periodical payments to
beneficiaries under trust or will may be relied on, whether such payments are
to be made within or without the colony.
All correspondence should be addressed to the Public Trustee, Wellington, New Zealand.
R. C. HAMERTON, Public Trustee.

TIE COLONIAL BANK OF NEW ZEALAND.
Incorporated, by Act of the General Assembly, 1874.
AUTHORIZED CAPITAL, £2,000,000. SUBSCRIBED, £1,000,000 ia
200,000 Share3 of £5 each.

Paid dp - - - £400,000
Reserved Fund - - 49,000
Unappropriated Profits 4,275

£453,275

Reserved Liability of Proprietors 1,600,000
Total, - - - £2,053,275
DIRECTORS:
HON. GEORGE M'LEAN. M.L.C., President.
JOHN ROBERTS, Esq. EDWIN JOHN SPENCE, Esq.
Hon. W. H. REYNOLDS, M.L.C. P. C. NEILL, Esq.
Hon. RICHARD OLIVER. M.L.C. Hon. W. J. M. LARNACH. C.M.G., M.H.R.
Auditors— J. EDMUND SMITH, Esq., and A. G. FENWICK, Esq.
Solicitors— Messrs. HAGGITT BROS, and BRENT.
HEAD OFFICE: DU EDIN.
General Manager— H. MACKENZIE.
Inspectors- -W '. WATSON, W. H. CHURTON. Relieving Officer—^/. B. VIGERS.
DUNEDIN OFFICE: Manager— L. O. BEAL. Accountant— J. B. DICK (Acting).
BRANCHES:
Auckland, W. Burton, Manager. Oamaru, W. Milne, Manager.
Balclutha, C. E. Thomson, Manager. Ophir, W. Bannerman, Manager.
Blenheim, H. F. Thompson, Manager. Palmerston, (Otago), R. Ewing, Manager.
Bluff, E. A. Gowring, Act. Man. With Agencies at Hampden and Waikouaiti.
Cambridge, A. G. Macara, Manager. QutENSTowN, C. E. Gudgeon, Manager.
Christchurch, B. H. Burns, Manager. With Agency at Arrow.
Cromwell, J. Ferguson, Manager. Rangiora, John Fulton, Manager.
Gore, H. H. Hare, Manager. St. Bathans, G. H. Brent, Manager.
Invercargill, Fred. Burns, Manager. Timaru, J. H Wrenn, Act. Man.
Lawrence, A. Morris, Act. Manager. Wanganui, A. J. Denniston, Manager.
Napier, F. F. Fenwick, Manager. Wellington, E J. Reid, Manager.
Nelson, D. Winton, Manager. Westport, G. M. McLean, Manager.
New Plymouth, S. Fraser, Manager. Wyndham, W, B. Hawson. Act. Man.
LONDON OFFICE-13 MOORGATE STREET, E. C.
Directors— A. G. ANDERSON, Esq.; L. H. COURTNEY, Esq., M.P.
Managing Director— GEORGE COWIE, Esq.
Bankers in London— TY& BANK OF ENGLAND, THE UNION BANK OF
LONDON, LIMITED.
EDINBURGH AGENCY:
Messrs. PEARSON, ROBERTSON & FINLEY. W.S., 13 South Castle Street.
AGENCIES AND CORRESPONDENTS:
In the Australasian Colonies—
The Bank of North Queensland. Limited, Bank of South Australia, Limited, Bank of
Van Diemen's Land, Limited, Bank of Victoria, Commercial Bank of Australia, Limited, ,,
Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, Queensland National Bank, Limited,
Western Australian Bank.
In India, China, etc. —
Ihe New Oriental Bank Corporation. Limited. Bank of Bengal, Bank of Madras, Char
tered Bank of India, Australia and China, National Bank of India, Limited .
In America —
Bank of British North America, Bank of California, Bank' of British Columbia.
In the United Kingdom —
British Linen Company Bank, Capital and Counties Bank, Limited. Manchester and
County Bank, Limited, National Bank, Limited, National Provincial Bank of England,
Union Bank of London, Limited.
THE BANK grants DRAFTS and negotiates or collects BILLS on all the above places,
and transacts every description of Banking business in connection with New Zealand and
the Australian Colonies,
UNDERTAKES THE LONDON AGENCY of persons connected with New Zealand,
the purchase and sale of Government and other Securities. Shares, etc. holding the same for
safe custody, and Drawing the Interest or Dividends thereon as they fall due.
ISSUES CIRCULAR NOTES for the convenience of travelers.
RECEIVES DEPOSITS at the Head Office, Branches, and London Office for fixed
periods, at rates which can be ascertained on application.
Dunedin, December, 188S.

BANK OF NEW ZEALAND,
Incorporated by Act of the General Assembly.
CAPITAL SUBSCRIBED, £1,200,000. PAID-UP, £1,125,000.
RESERVE LIABILITY, £1,500,000.
DIRECTORS.
Geo. Buckley, Esq., President.
W. L. Taylor, Esq. F. Nelson George, Esq.
W. S. Wilson, Esq. John McLean, Esq.
W. H. Colbeck, Esq. Arthur Bull, Esq.
AUDITORS.
J. L. Wilson, Esq. R. McDonald Scott, Esq.
GENERAL MANAGER AND INSPECTOR.
John Murray, Esq.
HEAD OFFICE,  AUCKLAND.
London Office — i Queen Victoria Street, Mansion House. E.C.

BRANCHES AND AGENCIES IN NEW ZEALAND.
Akaroa, Alexandra South, Amberley, Aroha, Arrow, Ashburton, Balclutha, Blenheim,
Brunnerton, Bulls, Cambridge, Carterton, Christchurch, Clinton, Coromandel, Cromwell,
Danevirke,iDargaville- Dunedin, Dunedin North, Featherston, Feilding. Foxton, Geraldine,
Gisborne, Gere, Greymouth, Greytown, Halcombe, Hamilton, Hastings, Hawera, Hokitika,
Hutt, Invercargill, Kaiapoi, Kaikoura, Kawa Kawa, Kelso, Kumara, Lawrence, Leeston,
Lyttelton, Manaia, Mangawhare, Marton, Masterton, Mataura, Mosgiel. Motueka, Napier,
Na*.eby, Nelson, New Plymouth. Newton, Ngaruawahia. Normanbv, Oamaru, Ohinemuri,
Opotiki, Opunake, Ouiram, Oxford. Palmers.ton, Palmerston North, Patea, Picton, Port
Chalmers, Queenstown, Rakaia, Rangiora, Reefton, Rivenon, Ross, Roxburgh, Russell, San
son, Southbridge, Tak.ika, Tapanui, Tauranga, Te Aro, Te Awamutu, Temuka, Thames,
Timaru. Tok<>mairiro, Waikouati, Waimate, Waipawa, Waipukurau, Waitahuna, Waitara,
Wanganui. Wellington, Westport, Whangarei, Winton, Woodville, Wyndham.
IN AUSTRALIA : Melbourne Branch — Corner of Queen and Collins Streets.
Sydney Branch — Pitt Street, with Sub-branch at -^8 George Street. Newcastle Branch —
N.S.W, Adelaide Branch — South Australia. IN FIJI : Suva and Levuka.
The Itanlc of New Zealand has Agents in every part of
Great Britain and Ireland; also through
out Australia and Tasmania.
FOREIGN AGENTS.
Canada — Bank of British North America; Bank of Montreal.
California — Bank of California ; Bank of British Columbia ; Bank of British North America ;
Angle— Calif ornian Bank, Limited.
New York— Messrs Drexel, Morgan & Co.; Bank of Montreal; Bank of British North
America: Messrs. Blake Brothers & Co.
Boston, U. S.— Messrs Blake Brothers & Co.
PhILadklphia, U. S — Messrs. Drexel & Co.
Mexico, Peru, and the United States of Colombia— London Bank of Mexico and South
America, Limited. . .
Argentine Republic and Uruguay— London and River Plate Bank, Limited.
Bkazil — London and Brazilian Bank, Limited.
Valparaiso — Banco Nacional de Chile.
India, Ceylon, Singapore, China, and Japan— Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and
China ; Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
Java— Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China.
Alexandria— Credit Lyonnais.
South Africa— Standard Bank of South Africa, Limited.
Mauritius — Mauritius Commercial Bank.
Honolulu— Messrs. Bishop & Co.; Messrs. Claus Spreckels & Co.
The Bank of New Zealand are Bankers to the General Government of New Zealand.
Drafts are issued and Credits granted at any office in New Zealand upon any other Branch
or Agency of the Bank, or upon its British or Foreign Agents.
Circular Credits are issued for the use of travelers.
¦ Bills upon any part of the Colony, or wherever the Bank is represented in Australia or
elsewhere, are negotiated, and Moneys collected for Constituents. _ _
Current Rates of Interest given in the Colony for Deposits, and every description of Bark
ing business within the Colony, or between New Zealand and Australia, Great Britain, India,
China, California, etc., transacted on favorable terms.

THE NATIONAL
BANK OF NEW ZEALAND
LIMITED.
HEAD OFFICE: 71 OLD BROAD STREET, LONDON, E. C.

CAPITAL, - - £1,900,000.
Of which there has been Issued and Subscribed 100,000
Shares of £9 each. Paid up, £250,000.

DIRECTORS:

Chairman- E. BRODIE HOARE, Esq., M.P.
Deputy Chairman— -E. C. MORGAN, Esq.
SIR CHARLES CLIFFORD, WM. SMELLIE GRAHAME, Esq.,
JOHN MORRISON, Esq., JAMES RATTRAY, Esq., (of Dunedin, N. Z.)
WM. JOHNSTONE STEELE, Esq., PHILIP VANDERBYL, Esq.,
SYDNEY YOUNG, Esq.
This Bank has Correspondents throughout the
world, and has branches at all the leading towns in-
New Zealand. It receives Deposits for fixed periods
on terms which may be ascertained on application.
Issues Drafts and purchases Bills; and generally
transacts all descriptions of Banking business in
London and New Zealand.

BANKERS:
THE BANK OF ENGLAND.
LLOYDS, BAKNETTS & BOSANQUETS' BANK, L'td.
THE ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND.

Secretary: RICHARD MAXWELL, Esq.,
71 Old Broad Street, London.
General Manager in N. Z.: WILLIAM DYMOCK, Esq.,
Dunedin, New Zealand.

NEW ZEALAND, TASMANIA, AND AUSTRALIA

ROYAL MAIL LINE.
UNDER CONTRACT WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF NEW ZEALAND.

rr

i it mi shipping ci

LIMITED.

CAPITAL, £1,000,000.
The Company despatches FROM LONDON every four weeks, alternating
with San Francisco Mail Service, the following splendid Steamers, which
make the passage in Forty Days, and are unsurpassed for the completeness and
comfort of their passenger fittings :

RIMUTAKA,KAIKOURA,AORANGI, .
RUAPEHU, .
TONGARIRO,

Tons.
4,473
4,474 4,1634,163
4,163

H. P. Effective.
4,000.4,000. 4,000.
4,000.4,000.

The above steamers call at Teneriffe, Cape of . Good Hope, and Hobart on
the outward voyage, and at Rio de Janeiro and Teneriffe on the homeward
passage.
FARES TO THE PRINCIPAL PORTS.
Saloon, 6o Guineas and upwards ; Second Saloon, 35
Guineas and upwards; Third Class Closed Cabins,
with 2 Berths, 20 Guineas each ; Closed Cabins, with 4
Berths, 18 Guineas each; Open Berths, 16 Guineas each.

•The Steamer Service is supplemented by the frequent despatch of the
Company's fine iron Clipper Ships, which make the voyage in about Ninety
Days, and are provided with every requisite for the safety and convenience of
Saloon Passengers desiring a long sea voyage. Fares up lo 50 Guineas.
Arrangements can also be made for bo6king Parties of not less than 20 to'
30 Steerage Passengers.
For further particulars apply at the Company's Offices —
138 LEADENHALL ST., LONDON, EC.

Shaw, Savill & Albion Co.,
LIMITED.
THE PASSENGER LINE OF ROYAL MAIL STEAMSHIPS
TO AND FROM
London, Plymouth, and New Zealand.
Steamer. Tons Register. Commander.
TAINUI  5031  B.J. BARLOW, R.N.R.
DORIC  4744  J. W. JENNINGS.
ARAWA  5026  JOHN STUART.
IONIC  4753  W. H. KIDLEY.
COPTIC  4448  GEO. BURTON, R.N.R.
The above Steamers are despatched from London every four weeks for
New Zealand, calling at Teneriffe, Cape Town and Hobart (with passengers
for Australia) ; and they leave New Zealand aiso every four weeks for London,
calling at Rio de Janeiro and Teneriffe. By this favorite route the intense heat
and discomfort of the Red Sea are avoided.
These magnificent steamers are' noted for the excellence of the passages
they make ; they have unequalled accommodation for all classes of passengers,
and their commanders are men of great skill and experience. Every induce
ment to the travelling public is therefore offered by this line.
The First Class Saloon in each steamer is situated amidships, where the
motion of the ship and vibration from the engines are least felt. Passengers
who have travelled by these steamers have testified strongly to the many advan
tages derived from the Saloon accommodation being placed amidships. The
Staterooms are of exlra large size, and fitted wiih every convenience.
The Second Class Saloon is very superior (it is situated under the poop
deck in the " Arawa" and " Tainui," and near the middle of the ship in the
" Doric," " Ionic," and " Coptic"), and is warmed by steam pipes and lighted
by electricity in each vessel.
Steerage passengers have most excellent and roomy accommodation in the
between decks.
THE RATES OF PASSAGE-MONEY TO THE PRINCIPAL PORTS ARE .
Saloon, ... Sixty Guineas and upwards.
Second Saloon, - Thirty-five Guineas and upwards.
Third Class, Closed cabins with 2 berths, Twenty Guineas each.
" •¦ 4 " Eighteen "
" " Open berths, - - Sixteen " "
The Company also despatch their well-known and first-class iron sailing
ships at frequent and regular intervals, and these vessels are furnished with
every requisite for the convenience, comfort, and safety of those saloon passen
gers who prefer a long sea voyage. Fares from Forty Guineas.
For further information, apply at the Head Offices of the Company,
34 LEADENHALL STREET, E. C, LONDON,
OR TO THE COMPANY'S AGENTS.

NEW ZEALAND. The Tourist's Paradise.
' New Zealand is Nature 's favorite child, and the prodigal mother has filled her
lap pith a wealth of wonders that are to be seen nowhere else.''

LIMITED.
The fleet of the Company compiises 41 vessels, all new and fast, and fitted
with every modern improvement, while for excellence of appointmenls, table,
and attendance, the Union Line is a household word throughout the Southern
H misphere. The following Steamers are favorably and well known in the
Intercolonial service : —

MARAROA (2500 tons).
MANAPOURl (1800 tons).
TARAWERV (2000 tons).
TEKAP0 (2350 tons).
WAKATIPU (1800 tons).

WAIRAHAPA (1800 tons).
R0T0MAHANA (1750 tons).
WAIH0RA (2000 tons).
HAUItOTO (2000 tons).
TE ANAU (1700 tons).

These fine Steamers run regularly between Australia and New Zealand, as
follows :
From Melbourne. — Weekly for all New Zealand ports, and vice versa.
From Sydney. — six times month.y for all New Zealand ports and vice
versa. In addition to these services. Steamers leave Melbourne momhly fur New
Hebrides and Fiji Islands, Auckland monthly for Fiji, Auckland monthly for
Tonga and Samoa; wlnle one of the Company's Steamers plies regularly
between the different Islands of the Fiji and Tongan gioups.
New Zealand Services. — The bulk of the Company's fleet is engaged
in the coastal service of the Colony, and between the principal ports there is
almost daily communication.
By means of these services the Touii^t can visit all the year round the
WONDERS OF NEW ZEALAND SCENERY, INCLUDING IN THE NORTH
ISLAND, THE SANA TORIUM OF THE WORLD, THE
HOT LAKES DISTRICT,
with its ever active Geysers and Volcanoes ; and in the South Island
THE GREAT COLD LAKES AND ICE FIELDS,
forming a grand chain of Mountain Loch and Glen, including the unsurpassable
Mount Cook and its Glaciers. During January and February of each year
SPECIAL EXCURSIONS TO THE WEST COAST SOUNDS
are made, each trip occupying nine days from Dunedin, during which facility
is given [ox Fishing, Shooting, Sketching, and exploring these wonderful Fiords
where Nature is seen in her grandest aspect.
The Company are also contractors for the Mail Service between Australia.
New Zealand and San Francisco, and a steamer leaves Sydney monthly for
Auckland, Honolulu and-San Francisco, and vice versa.
For information on all points of interest to tourists and others, apply to
any of the, Company's numerous offices ihroughout the Colonies.
HEAD OFFICE : LONDON OFFICE :
Dunedin, New Zealand. 18 Walbrook, E.C.

WELLINGTON AND MANAWATU
RAILWAY CO., Limited, .

Notice to Intending Emigrants
Requiring First-Class
Agricultural and Pastoral Land.

THIS Company has for Sale, on favorable terms,
various Blocks of Land of the above descrip
tion, laid off in Sections varying iri area from 50
to 2000 acres. These are conveniently situated to
Railway Stations and Townships on the Company's
Line, and are accessible in most parts by level
and well-formed Roads.
The Company up to this date has sold upwards
of 48,000 acres, the bulk of which land has been
occupied, and in every instance the Owners are suc
cessful in raising large crops and stock for market.
The climate is acknowledged to be the most
favorable of any district in New Zealand.
Full information as to terms and plans can be
obtained at the offices of the Company, Lambton
Quay, Wellington, New Zealand; .
JAMES- WALLACE,-
Wellington, igt/i July, 1889. Secretary.

JOHNSTON & CO.,

iiaml ipis

WELLING TON and WANGANUI,
NEW ZEALAND.

ESTABLISHED, 1850.

RECEIVE CONSIGNMENTS OF ALL DESCRIPTION
OF MERCHANDISE AND MAKE PURCHASES ON
COMMISSION OF WOOL, TALLOW, SKINS,
HIDES, FLAX, GRAIN, BUTTER,
PRESERVED MEATS AND
FROZEN MEATS.

AG-ENTS FOR
The Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co.
The China Navigation Co., Limited.
H. W. Peabody & Co.'s Line of Sailing Ships
from Boston.
R. W. Cameron & Co.'s Line of Sailing Ships from
New York.
London & Lancashire Fire Insurance Company.
Union Fire and Marine Insurance Co. of New
Zealand. London Agents : Messrs. POBT. BROOKS & CO.,
St. Peters Chambers, Cornhill.
Bankers, Wellington : BANK OP AUSTRAL 1SIA.
Bankers, London : BANK OF AUSTRALASIA.

ESTABLISHED 1847.

ESTABLISHED 1847.

W. M. BANNATYNB & CO.,

(

Shipping, Insurance and Commission Agents,
Consignments from all parts of the World receive
Special Attention. Returns rendered promptly.
Consignors are authorized to draw against
Goods that are recommended.

AGENCIES.
Royal Insurance Co., of Liverpool, Fire and Life.
Nobel's Explosives Co., Limited, Glasgow, Dynamite, etc.
Curtis' s & Harvey, London, Blasting Powder.
. James Pain & Son, London, Fireworks.
William Mann, Jr. & Co., LewisLon, Pa., Axes.
David Corsar & Sons, Arbroath, Canvas.
J. M. Greig & Co., London, Candles.
E. J. Henry & Co., London, Paper Bags, etc.
Samuel Berger & Co., London, Starch, etc.
R. Peterson & Sous, Glasgow, Pickles, Sauces, etc.
David Dunn & Son, Glasgow, Preserved Fish, etc.
Swallow & Ariel], Limited, Melbourne, Treacle, Biscuits, etc.
R. & N. Pott, London, Vinegar.
J. M. Fleming, Manila, Cigars.
Sideman, Lachman & Co , San Francisco, Cigars.
Lone Jack Cigarette Co , Lynchburg, Va., Cigarettes.
Woodson & Hughes, Lynchburg, Va , Cigarettes.
T. C. Williams & Co., Richmond, Va., Tobacco.
Watson & McGill. Petersburg, Va., Tobacco.
James Leigh Jones, Richmond, Va., Tobacco.
H. & F. Bouter, Hamburg, Cherry Brandy.
St. Lucia Lime Fruit Co., Liverpool, Lime Juice, etc.
Normandin, Macgen & Co., London. Sauterne.
Warre & Co., Oporto, Port Wine.
Hugo Fehr, Hamburg, Lager Beer.
Bass, Ratcliff <fe Gretton, Limited. London, Ale.
Ind. Coope &. Co., Limited. London, Ale.
T. P. Griffin & Co., London, Ale and Stout.
K ,. , . " W. E. Johnson & Co., Liverpool, Stout.
Patterson & Hibbert, London, Bass Stout,
Nostrand & Cp., late Bach & Nostrand, New York, Sarsaparilla.
Ernest Schultz, London, Max Sutaine & Co.'s Champagne.
Bernard & Co., Leith, Encore Whisky.
W. Helm & Co., Leith, Whisky.
James Lord & Co., Glasgow, Whisky.
William Teacher & Sons, London and Glasgow, Whisky.
Charles Jobit & Co., Cognac, Brandy.
I. Denis, Henry Mounie & Co., Cognac, Brandy.

Address
Hunter & Featherston Sts., Wellington, New Zealand.
London Reference : Union Bank of Australia, Limited.

COKER'S HOTEL,

MANCHES TER S TREE T.

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND.

At this Hotel are found all the comforts and
refinements of a thoroughly well managed Eng
lish home, in addition to those facilities for
travelers, tourists, families, or men of business,
visiting New Zealand, which can only be pro
vided by the complete organization of a large
establishment. There are highly finished suites of apartments,
private reading and writing rooms, ladies' draw
ing room, private garden, and every requisite
for making life agreeable, while the social and
domestic arrangements of the Hotel leave noth
ing to be desired.
Visitors will find all their wants supplied
under the roof of their Hotel, and will meet
with every attention and consideration.
J. E. OOKER, Proprietor.

WARNER'S
Family ^ Commercial Hotel
CATHEDRAL SQUARE,
.CHRISTCHURCH, N. Z.

THE BILLIARD SALOON,
Attached to the Hotel is unsurpassed by any other in the Colony, containing
three tables specially imported from England to the order of the Proprietor.
THE SUITES OF PRIVATE APARTMENTS,
"Which are elegantly furnished and appointed, are entirely distinct from the
Hotel portion of the building, thus insuring perfect privacy. Recently 17 new
rooms have been added.
A novelty in Colonial hotel accommodation will be available at THE
COMMERCIAL, in the shape of a
LADIES' DRAWING-ROOM,
KEPT SPECIALLY. SELECT AND EXCLUSIVELY FOR LADIES.
A high-pressure water supply has been arranged for on the premises, and the
Bath Rooms are fitted with every convenience for hot, cold, or shower baths at
any time.
Comment on the quality of the liquors supplied at THE COMMERCIAL
is unnecessary, as the cellar is under the special supervision of Mr. W. F.
Warner. ,
The Hotel being most centrally situate, adjacent to the Cathedral, and within
a short distance of the Museum, Theater, and other public buildings, and with
•a tram service to all parts of the suburbs passing it at short intervals, renders it
unequalled as a place of residence for Families or Commercial Gentleman visit
ing Christchurch.
For the convenience of Commercial Travellers, eight well-lighted Sample
Rooms; are provided,
An excellent Chef -de- Cuisine has been engaged, and generally no pains have
been spared to make THE COMMERCIAL the leading hotel in Chiist-
-chi'rch. Prompt attention will be given to telegrams or letters applying for apart
ments.

W. F. WARNER, Proprietor.

Agent for COBB & CO.'S Telegraph Line of Royal Mail Coaches
to Westland, the finest Scenery in the Whole World.

THE WELLINGTON

Di

reserving ani Wmh Co,

[LIMITED.

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND.
Wholesale, Retail and Shipping Butchers
and Meat Preservers.

SHOPS : LAMBTON QUAY, WILLIS STREET.
SLAUGHTER YARDS AND PRESERVING WORKS :
NGAHAURANGA.

FIRST PRIZE MEDALS AT THE NEW ZEALAND
INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION FOR PRESERVED
MEATS AND SOUPS.

The Company is exporting largely frozen meat, tallow,
preserved meats, soups, etc., to the London market, where
its brand is well and favorably known.
The Company is prepared to execute orders with
despatch to any part of the world.
Samples of the various articles are shown in the New
Zealand Court at the Paris International Exhibition.

NEW ZEALAND AND
South Seas Exhibition
1889-1890. PATRONS:
His Excellency the Right Hon. the EARL OF ONSLOW,
G.C.M.G.
Major General Sir WILLIAM F. DRUMMOND JERVOIS, C.B.,
G.C.M.G., R.E., Etc.
PRESIDENT:
JOHN ROBERTS, ESQ.
VICE-PRESIDENTS :
The Hon. Sir HARRY ALBERT ATKINSON, K.CM.G., Premier of New
Zealand.— Sir F. DILLON BELL, Agent-General for New Zealand.— Count de
JOUFFROY D'ABBANS, Consul-General of France, New Zealand.— The Hon. T.
FERGUS, Minister of Justice and Defence, New Zealand.— The Hon. Sir W.
FITZHERBERT, K.CM.G., Speaker of the Legislative Council, New Zealand.—
Sir GEORGE GREY, K.C.B.— The Hon. Sir JOHN HALL, K C.M.G.,
M.H.R.— Sir JAMES HECTOR, K.CM.G.— The Hon. R. OLIVER, M.L.C—
The Hon. Sir MAURICE O'RORKE, Speaker of the House of Representatives,
New Zealand.— The Hon. W. H. REYNOLDS, M.L.C— The Hon. Colonel
SARGOOD, M.L.C, Victoria.— The Hon. Sir ROBERT STOUT, K.C.M.G.—
The Hon. Sir JULIUS VOGEL, K.CM.G., M.H.R.— His Honor Mr. JUSTICE
WILLIAMS.— His Worship the MAYOR of Dunedin (H. Gourley, Esq.).
EXECUTIVE COMMISSIONER:
R. E. N. TWOPENY, ESQ.
GENERAL MANAGER:
JULES JOUBERT, Chev. Legion d'Honneur.
TREASURER: SECRETARY:
A. BARTLEMAN, Esq. D. HARRIS HASTINGS.
OFFICIAL. AGENT- :
LONDON, P. L. Symonds, 85 Fulham Road, S. Kensington.
_,_.„ (E. V. RAUCH, South Australian Court, Paris Exhibition.
' ' j E. LARUELLE, Paris Exhibition.

CLASSIFICATION OF EXHIBITS.

Class 1. Geological and Mineralogical Collections. 2. Mining and Metallurgical Machinery
and Appliances. 3. Chemical Manufactures. 4. Glassware, Pottery, etc. 5. Household
Furniture, Brushware, etc. 6. Heating and Lighting Apparatus. 7. Textile Fabrics.
8. Ready-made Clothing, etc. q. Printing, Stationery, etc. 10. Armament, Native Weapons,
etc. 11. Surgical and Pharmaceutical Appliances. 12. Hardware. 13. Carriages, Horse Fur
niture, etc. 14. Educational Appliances. 15. Scientific Instruments. 16. Musical Instruments.
17. Sanitary and Athletic Appliances. 18. Works of Art. iq. Photographs. 20. Machinery
for Wood and Metal Working, etc. 21. Sewing, Knitting, Printing Machines. 22. Heavy
Machinery, Castings, hip Models, etc. 23. Forestry Products. 24. Agricultural Products.
25. Wines, Spirits, Beers, Cordials, Aerated Waters, and Cooperage, 26. Animal Fond Pro
ducts. 27. Bootsj Shoes, Saddlery, Leather, etc. 28 Wood and Fibres. 29. Stuffed Animals,
Insects, Beekeeping Apparatus. 30. Traps for Game, and Fishing Tackle. 31. Agricultural
Machinery and Implements. 32. Flowers, Fruit Models, Garden Appliances. 33. Silver
smiths' Work. 34. Artisan's Individual Work. 35. " Women's Work.

OFFICIAL PROGRAMME.
IT is intended to celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Foundation of the Colony of New
Zealand, by holding in the City of Dunedin an Exhibition of the Arts, Industries, Resour
ces, and Manners of New Zealand, Australia, and the other Countries and Colonies in the
Southern Pacific.
The principal objects of this Exhibition are to practically illustrate the development of the
resources of New Zealand during the first half century of her existence, in comparison with the
progress made by other Colonies, British and Foreign ; to stimulate industry and promote In
tercolonial commerce ; to strengthen the natural ties which connect all the Countries in the
South Pacific Ocean, and to call attention to their position and potentialities.
The recent improvement in the commercial condition of New Zealand, and the prospect of
prosperity immediately before her, offers special opportunities for the development of industry
and the extension of Intercolonial commerce ; whilst many considerations point to the desira
bility of bringing the importance of the South Sea Islands into notice, and cultivating a closer
acquaintance with their peoples.
The Exhibition is held by, and at the risk of a number of New Zealand colonists, who have
subscribed a Guarantee Fund for the purpose, after the model of tho^e upon which the Great
Exhibition of 1851, the London International Exhibition of 1862, and the Adelaide Jubilee Ex
hibition of 1887 were carried out.
The Government of New Zealand have recognized this Exhibition as the Official Celebra
tion of the Jubilee of the Colony, and issued invitations to the Governments of Australia and
the other Colonies and Islands in the Southern Pacific to be officially represented thereat.
They have further undertaken to assist the Exhibition by erecting the main building, which
will contain the picture galleries, and themselves exhibiting collections illustrating the fauna,
flora, geology, and mineralogy of New Zealand, as well as objects of historical interest. The
Government will also, with the assistance of the native chiefs, organize a representation of
Maori life and customs.
The Commissioners invite exhibits of all kinds from all Colonies, British and Foreign,
wheresoever situated, as well as from Islands under British rule in the South Pacific. They are
also desirous of obtaining Works of Art, Educational, Scientific, and Machinery Exhibits from
other countries; but ordinary Industrial Exhibits from Europe and America can only be admit
ted under special conditions. Inducements will be offered for the exhibition of processes of
manulacture. With the consent and support of the other chief cities of New Zealand, the Exhibition will
be held in Dunedin, which is the center of the railway system of the southern and most popu
lous island of the Colony. A suitable site has been obtained in the heart of the town, close to
the railway station and intercolonial wharves, A line of railway will deliver exhibits into the
grounds. The Exhibition will be open to the public on Tuesday, 26th November, 1889, and close
about the middle of April, 1890. It will be open in the evening as well as the day time.
The Government will issue Customs regulations for the free admission of Intercolonial and
Foreign Exhibits, similar to those in force at Melbourne and other International Exhibitions,
and similar railway privileges will be allowed for exhibits. The reproduction of exhibits will
be prohibited by law. '
CONDITIONS AND REGULATIONS.

Governments intending to take part in this Exhibition are requested to intimate the same
as soon as possible. Applications for space for exhibits from Colonies officially represented
must be made through the Commissioners of the Colonies to which the applicant belongs.
Applications from countries and colonies not officially represented should be addressed directly
to the Secretary at Dunedin. .
Applications for space, with full particulars, are invited as early as possible, and in the
allotment of space precedence will be given, as far as possible, to priority of application. No
application will be received later than the ist of July, 1889.
The ordinary charge for space will be £1 is. for the first ten square feet or any less space,
and a shilling for every additional square foot. Sculpture and paintings approved by the Fine
Arts Committee will be admitted free, as well as educational and scientific exhibits shown by
Government departments, and exhibits in classes 34 and 35. Machinery and bulky exhibits
will be shewn in special annexes, in which space will be charged for at the reduced rate of £z
is. for the first twenty feet, and sixpence for every additional foot. Wall space will be charged
at the same rate as machinery. All applications must be accompanied by payment of the full
amount of the space required. Special arrangements can be made for the exhibition of articles
in thegrounds. . _ .... . ,
Customs entries, transportation, receiving, and arranging articles lor exhibition must De
undertaken by the exhibitor at his own expense, but no charge will be made for the carriage of
goods on the railway lines. New Zealand and Island Exhibits will be carried free on the Union
S.S. Company's boats, and Australian exhibits the double journey at single freight by the same
'fudges will be appointed by the Commissioners, acting mainly upon the recommendation
of the exhibitors themselves. Certificates of first, second, and third order of merit will be
awarded. Form of applications for space and all further information can be obtained from
D. HARRIS HASTINGS, Secretary.

mmttitmim