138 THE AUCKLAND RURAL DISTRICTS. vessels, and is the centre of a large and flourishing timber trade. Here, and on the opposite harbour of Mercury Bay, the kauri pine and other valuable trees are fine and abundant. The whole district, in fact, from Cape Colville to the Thames, forming an eastern peninsula forty miles long, by fifteen broad, is well wooded, but rugged and mountainous; though here and there it presents some valleys and fertile garden spots. Gold has been discovered in the neighbourhood of Coromandel, and though present researches have not succeeded in finding it in commercially paying quantities, a strong belief prevails among practical men on the spot, that the Coromandel ranges will eventually give forth both gold and other ores in considerable abundance. The Kawau, a small island about twenty miles north of the capital, is chiefly remarkable as having been the site of some promising copper works, now temporarily abandoned, owing to the scarcity and dearness of the necessary mining labour. The Great Barrier, a large island, about fifty miles north-east of the Auckland harbour, to which it forms a good outer breakwater, has also produced some copper. It is well wooded, and possesses a fine harbour in Port Abercrombie, where a vessel of 500 tons has been built. The coasts abound with the hapuka, one of the best fish in New Zealand; and the few native and European residents possess some thriving little cultivations and a few fine cattle. The Pensioner Villages were laid out by Government for a body of married pensioners (privates and officers), selected from among the most able-bodied volunteers in England; each private, on certain conditions of light military service, receiving the gift of a cottage and an acre of land. The experiment, in a civil or industrial point of view, has proved successful-many of the men having acquired landed property, and created clusters of little garden-farms which supply Auckland and the shipping with a considerable quantity of grain, cheese, butter, poultry, vegetables, and fruit. These Pensioner Villages, connected with each other by good roads, lie about five miles apart, in a sort of irregular segment of a circle round the town and the suburban belt. Onéhunga, the nearest, before alluded to as the rising port town of the western harbour, is six miles from Auckland; Howick, the most distant, about twelve. THE WEST-COAST COUNTRY. 139 A few miles from Howick we reach Drury, in the Papakura district, at present the frontier inland Settlement of Aucklandthe natives not yet having parted with any of the inland tracts more to the South. Here are some good farms; and the whole district is rapidly coming under cultivation. Waiuku lies a little to the south-west of Papakura, nearer the coast, between an arm of the Manukau harbour and the Awaroa stream, which latter runs into the Waikato. Here, a canal cut of about a mile, or a tramway across the portage, would connect the Waikato with the western harbour of Auckland. The Waiuku is not a very fertile district, but owing to its commanding position it has been rather a favourite place of settlement. It has always had ready access to Auckland by water, and a fair road through Papakura and the Pensioner Villages has now placed it in direct communication with the capital by land. Except the "North shore," Coromandel, and the Islands, which are all woody, these rural districts of Auckland, including the nearer suburban lands and the Pensioner Villages, consist, for the most part, of open level country, interspersed here and there with small bush, but generally covered with fern, toetoe, ti-tree, manuku scrub, flax, and coarse grasses-lands for the most part reducible to cultivation at from 37. to 51. per acre; some of them very poor in quality, but others capable (in grass) of feeding five to six sheep, or (under the plough) of producing thirty to thirty-five bushels of wheat per acre. The remaining three divisions of the Auckland Province, the "West-coast," the "Central," and the "East-coast" districts, require but brief mention; for, although they comprise by far the largest and even the finest portions of the Province, they are (as yet) almost entirely in the hands of the natives, and offer little trace of European settlement or population. The West coast may be briefly described as an extensive district lying along the coast from Waiuku to Mokau, and bounded inland by the river Waipa-a tract of country some 100 miles long by 25 broad. It contains a fair proportion of agricultural land, and exhibits the two European Settlements of Whaingaroa and Kawhia. The former is a small Settlement, river-harbour, and missionary station, fifty miles south of the western harbour of Auckland, numbering some 200 settlers. The latter, forty 140 THE WAIKATO AND EAST COAST COUNTRY. miles further south, is a semi-native settlement, the chief port and trading post of the powerful Waikato tribe, and an important Wesleyan mission station: it possesses a fair harbour for coasters, and is the depôt of a large native trade-shipping pork, potatoes, wheat, maize, and flax, to Auckland, and importing groceries and general merchandise for its native customers in return. The "Central District" of the Auckland Province consists mainly of the great valleys of the Waikato and the Waipa, and may be said to extend almost from the Papakura district down to lake Taupo and the northern borders of the Wellington Province. It embraces a tract of country 100 miles long by some 40 broad; and in genial climate, rich soil, striking scenery, water-carriage, and agricultural and pastoral admixture of forest, fern, grass, and flax lands, it is probably entitled to rank as the "Garden of New Zealand." The beautiful lake Taupo (fifty miles in circumference), which so fitly forms the end of so fine a district, surrounded by lakelets, hot-springs, and chalybeate waters, may well become the site of some future New Zealand Cheltenham; whilst towering over Taupo, 7000 feet high, there is snow-capped Tongariro, forming a noble background to these "Hesperides" of the Waikato. The fifth, or "East-coast," district of the Auckland Province winds along the coast from the Firth of the Thames to Poverty Bay, and embraces a tract of country, say 150 miles long by some 30 broad. This was the coast first visited by Cook, and the names of many of the bays and capes are those given by our illustrious circumnavigator. The extensive tract of country, forming the shores of the great Bay of Plenty, well deserves the character which the name implies; there being no part of New Zealand where the natives are more numerous or more industrious, and no part which produces such a quantity of wheat, maize, flax, pork, and other native produce (shipped coastwise) for the markets of Auckland. These three great southern districts, constituting two-thirds of the Province of Auckland, form the stronghold of the remnants of the native race. The "West-coast," with the "Central" district, is the country of the Waikato, the most numerous and powerful of all remaining native tribes; and the "East-coast" is dotted with the villages of what are commonly called the East-coast people. But the entire native population, even of these the most populous parts of New Zealand, does not exceed 30,000, whilst the country (under the plough) would probably be found capable of maintaining a population of two or three millions of colonists. Though, however, Whaingaroa and Kawhia may be called the only European Settlements to be found in this great southern country, there are several native villages and missionary stations scattered over it, and generally connected with each other by native paths, forest-tracks, or canoe streams. Here, the traveller will occasionally meet with the germ of some European Settlement in the shape of little knots of white men, such as small frontier squatters, native traders, an old convict or two, retired whalers, runaway sailors, bush sawyers, and mechanicsrude pioneers of progress who renouncing the small tyrannies of civilisation have embraced the freer life of the natives, wedded the dark-eyed daughters of the land, and attached themselves to the native villages as influential relatives and art (or war) teaching members of the community. TARANAKI.* Taranaki, the western Province of the North Island, and the seat of the present native disturbances, is about 100 miles in extreme length, by 60 in extreme breadth. Its chief natural characteristics are these:-1, small but compact area; 2, moderate native population, some 3500; 3, climate, slightly cooler than Auckland; 4, utter absence of harbours, lakes, or large rivers; but profusion of small streams and water power; 5, possession of Mount Egmont, the most beautiful of mountains; 6, large acreage proportion of the finest agricultural land. There are not any outlying little Settlements in this Province. The inhabitants are, or rather were, concentrated in the villagecapital, and in a belt of farms, hamlets, and clearings, lying around within a circle of eight or ten miles. Of the two and a half millions of acres which the Province contains, about one-third * Formerly called New Plymouth. The chief town of the Province is now called New Plymouth, and the Province itself, Taranaki. (the back or inland portion) consists of forest tracts of valuable timber, and the remainder (the open undulating country along the coast) consists mainly of agricultural and pastoral lands of the finest character, watered by a hundred Tamars, Darts, Doves, Deverons, and Dees. The great, but the only, natural deficiency of this beautiful little Province is the absence of harbours-the shipping place of the town, even, being only an open roadstead. Large vessels anchor about two miles off, and goods are landed, and produce shipped, in large cargo-boats. It should, however, be remarked, that the absence of a harbour is the cause of delay and anxiety rather than of actual loss. Of the hundreds of small vessels which have loaded at New Plymouth during the last dozen years, there have been only three or four wrecked; and in fine weather, cargo is probably shipped and discharged as safely and expeditiously here as at any port in New Zealand. New Plymouth, south lat. nearly 39°, about 150 miles from Auckland by sea, is the chief, and indeed the only, small town in the Province; and with the suburban hamlets of the Enui, Hua, Omata, and Tataramaka may number some 3000 people. The Settlement was founded by the Plymouth Company of New Zealand, an association of Cornish and Devonshire gentlemen (Courtenays, Molesworths, Bullers, Trelawneys, &c.), which afterwards merged into the great London Company, and was planted by Frederick Alonzo Carrington, and a body of pioneer colonists in 1841. The village-capital, snugly planted on the margin of the beach, embosomed amid gentle hills, and watered by the Huatoki, Mangotuku, and tributary burns, displays its granite church and chapels, its rustic mills and breweries, snug hostelries, stores, and primitive shops; but, affecting no town airs, stands out before the world a robust, hearty-looking village, famed throughout the land for its troops of rosy children, pretty women, honey, fine mutton, and dairies of Devonshire cream. The appearance of the Settlement from sea, in fine weather, is both beautiful and varied: the taste for sylvan scenery and quiet rustic beauty is gratified by the combination of stream and forest, glade and valley, pastures and trim fields, dotted with cattle or yellow with corn; whilst, for the Salvator |