The Long White Cloud: "Ao Tea Roa"

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 D...

"The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on. Nor all your piety or wit Can lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

The Maori mind conceived of the Universe as divided into three regions--the Heavens above, the Earth beneath, and the Darkness under the Earth. To Rangi, the Heaven, the privile...

"A ship is floating on the harbour now, A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow. There is a path on the sea's azure floor, No keel hath ever ploughed that path before."

The Maoris told Cook that, years before the _Endeavour_ first entered Poverty Bay, a ship had visited the northern side of Cook's Strait and stayed there some time, and that a h...

Maoris, shipping before the mast on board whalers and traders, made some of the best seamen on the Pacific. They visited Sydney and other civilized ports, where their fine physi...

Marsden's notes help us to picture his first night in New Zealand. The son of the Yorkshire blacksmith, the voyager in convict-ships, the chaplain of New South Wales in the days...

Between 1830 and 1840, then, New Zealand had drifted into a new phase of existence. Instead of being an unknown land, peopled by ferocious cannibals, to whose shores ship-captai...

Twin are the gates of sleep: through that of Horn, Swift shadows winged, the shapes of truth are borne. Fair wrought the Ivory gate gleams white anigh, But false the dreams dark...

Though Governor Hobson landed in January, the formal annexation of the Colony did not take place until May. He had first to take possession; and this could only be effectually d...

"Awhile he makes some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves, And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning-...

Captain Grey came in the nick of time. That he managed because he wasted no time about coming. The despatch, removing him from South Australia to New Zealand, reached Adelaide o...

The Company's settlements were no longer confined to the shores of Cook's Straits. In 1846, Earl Grey, formerly Lord Howick, came to the Colonial Office, and set himself to comp...

The Constitution under which the colonists were granted the management of their own affairs was partly based on Grey's suggestions, though it was drafted in England by Mr. Adder...

"In defence of the colonists of New Zealand, of whom I am one, I say most distinctly and solemnly that I have never known a single act of wilful injustice or oppression committe...

In 1860 the Taranaki settlement was growing to be what it now is--a very pleasant corner of the earth. Curving round the seashore under the lofty, lonely, symmetrical cone of Eg...

From the middle of 1864, to January, 1865, there was so little fighting that it might have been thought that the war was nearing its end. The Waikato had been cleared, and the T...

"Fortune, they say, flies from us: she but wheels Like the fleet sea-bird round the fowler's skiff, Lost in the mist one moment, and the next Brushing the white sail with a whit...

"Members the Treasurer pressing to mob; Provinces urging the annual job; Districts whose motto is cash or commotion; Counties with thirsts which would drink up an ocean; These b...

"Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small That stood upon the floor or by the wall, And some loquacious Vessels were, and some Listened, perhaps, but never talked at all."

"Now who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten who in ears and eyes Match me; we all surmise, They this thing, and I that; wh...

In 1890 a new force came into the political field--organized labour. The growth of the cities and of factories in them, the decline of the alluvial and more easily worked gold-f...

Some 785,000 whites, browns, and yellows are now living in New Zealand. Of these the browns are made up of about 37,000 Maoris and 5,800 half-castes. The Maoris seem slowly decr...