List of Illustrations

Te Reinga Waterfall

A Western Alpine Valley

The White Terrace, Rotomahana

On a River—­“Papa” Country

Maori and Carved Bow of Canoe

A Maori Maiden

Stern of Canoe

Maori Wahine

Carved Gateway of Maori Village

Mount Egmont, Taranaki

View of Nelson

Sir George Grey

The Curving Coast

War Map

Rewi

Major Kemp

Kauri Pine Tree

The Hon. John Mackenzie

Sir Harry Atkinson

A New Zealand Settler’s Home

Picton—­Queen Charlotte’s Sound

The Hon. John Balance

  Te Waharoa.  Henare Kaihau, M.H.R.  Hon. James Carroll,
  M.H.R.  Right Hon. R.J.  Seddon (Premier).  Mahuta (The
  Maori “King")

Maoris Conveying Guests in a Canoe

A Rural State School

Map of New Zealand

Chapter I

THE LONG WHITE CLOUD[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ao-Tea-Roa, the Maori name of New Zealand.]

  “If to her share some female errors fall,
  Look on her face—­and you’ll forget them all.”

Though one of the parts of the earth best fitted for man, New Zealand was probably about the last of such lands occupied by the human race.  The first European to find it was a Dutch sea-captain who was looking for something else, and who thought it a part of South America, from which it is sundered by five thousand miles of ocean.  It takes its name from a province of Holland to which it does not bear the remotest likeness, and is usually regarded as the antipodes of England, but is not.  Taken possession of by an English navigator, whose action, at first adopted, was afterwards reversed by his country’s rulers, it was only annexed at length by the English Government which did not want it, to keep it from the French who did.  The Colony’s capital bears the name of a famous British commander, whose sole connection with the country was a flat refusal to aid in adding it to the Empire.  Those who settled it meant it to be a theatre for the Wakefield Land System.  The spirit of the land laws, however, which its settlers have gradually developed is a complete negation of Wakefield’s principle.  Some of the chief New Zealand settlements were founded by Church associations; but the Colony’s education system has long been purely secular.  From the first those who governed the Islands laboured earnestly to preserve and benefit the native race, and on the whole the treatment extended to them has been just and often generous—­yet the wars with them were long, obstinate, and mischievous beyond the common.  The pioneer colonists looked upon New Zealand as an agricultural country, but its main industries have turned out to be grazing and mining.  From the character of its original settlers it was expected to be the most conservative of the colonies; it is just now ranked as the most democratic.  Not only by its founders, but for many years afterwards, Irish were avowedly or tacitly excluded from the immigrants sent to it.  Now, however, at least one person in eight in the Colony is of that race.