EMIGRATION EXPERIENCES.

3

public, I was induced to attempt the production of one. Feeling, however, that I could not satisfactorily perform the task without revisiting the colony and seeing for myself what progress had been made in my absence, I made a second trip to New Zealand. This time I visited all the chief Settlements of the Colony, and was much struck with the great progress which had been made during my absence. On reaching England again, my work was published, and met, I fear, with a better reception than it deserved; and as a second edition has long been called for, and as a trip to the Highlands has afforded time and leisure, when salmon are sulky and trout wont rise, to ply the pen, I have produced the present volume. A man who has spent a large portion of his time in seeing new countries, and in making war on the wilderness, cannot be expected to write with the force and polish of a "Times Leader" or a "Saturday Review." A colonist must content himself with writing not to be admired, but to be understood; and in this book I have sought only to use plain language, and to place before the public a fair and honest picture of New Zealand as she is to-day.

Certain private affairs, with which I need not trouble the reader, coupled with what I hope I may call a patriotic desire to promote the further colonisation of the beautiful country of my adoption, are still prolonging my stay in England; and it is not improbable that before I pitch my tent in New Zealand once more and for ever, business or pleasure may carry me thither on a third visit. But though the time of my final departure is uncertain, I may remark that it is my intention, ere long, to settle down in New Zealand, finally and for good-and there, away from east wind and income-tax, and the fret and fume of life's rough journey here, I hope to resume our old pursuits of the plough and the fleece, and to help a little more to develop the resources of that fine young country which so many of my friends and relatives have now made their home.

Having thus said a word about myself, I shall ask the reader to allow me to say a word about my book. Distrustful cronies of the intending emigrant may tell him to give no ear to what I say, because I have an interest to serve in saying it. I have; and what then? Is a person to be disbelieved because, and only because, it would benefit him were he to be believed? If

4

own.

INTERESTED MOTIVES.

The

so, the business of the world would stop to-morrow. family solicitor tells us of a good ten per cent. landed investment-do we discredit him and decline the bargain because he would pocket the conveyance-fee? The dentist advises our having a tooth out-do we turn away in agony because he would be paid for drawing it? Your wife's milliner holds aloft a new bonnet-does your wife refuse it because Madame La Mode would pocket a pound by selling it? In common with every colonist, I have an interest in sending population to our sparsely peopled country; for population, bringing with it capital and labour, puts money in our pockets and raises the value of every head of stock and acre of land we may happen to But I hold the belief and on no light grounds-that in the United Kingdom there are thousands of struggling professional men, petty capitalists, farmers, traders, and the like, together with thousands of half-paid labourers and mechanics, who would be saved by timely emigration to any good colony like New Zealand, and believe, that though their going thither might benefit me, their going thither would most benefit themselves. But though I am thus interested in seeing emigration flow to New Zealand rather than to America or elsewhere, I am equally interested in seeing all people who are unfitted to succeed in New Zealand prevented from going there. For if a person who may be unfitted for our colonial life is simple enough to be led away by those brilliant pictures which are sometimes presented to him and should go to New Zealand he will frequently either write back such dismal tales of the country he has been allured to, or will find his way home again and give so revengeful" an account of what he has seen and done and suffered, that a dozen people in his neighbourhood who might get to hear of him and his fate-people, perhaps, who were thinking of New Zealand and who were admirably fitted to succeed there-might be so disheartened by his tale of disappointment as either to abandon the idea of emigrating altogether, or to turn from New Zealand and proceed to some other colony in which their faith had not been so rudely skaken. Thus, though many people have, I dare say, gone to New Zealand partly through me, many have unquestionably been kept from going there mainly by me; and whenever I am

NEW ZEALAND AS AN EMIGRATION FIELD.

5

consulted by any one who seems to me personally unfitted for our New Zealand life, I-and from the strongest motives of self-interest-at once plainly tell him so, and counsel him to stay at home.

It has been asserted, by practical men who have seen New Zealand after visiting other colonies, that, if common good government from the first had spared those early disasters described in the following chapter, the physical advantages of the young country, her soil and climate, her natural gifts, would by this time have attracted to her a population of a quarter of a million of the flower of British emigrants. Though, however, the deplorable misgovernment of New Zealand in her first days. terribly crippled her progress and inflicted calamitous losses on her pjoneer settlers, it has produced a counter, a beneficial, effect in making her a better emigration field for those who are emigrating now. Had it not been for this early misgovernment, the population of the colony might have been five-fold what it is, when, necessarily, there would have been a five-fold appropriation of the best lands. Families emigrating to New Zealand in 1861 will find a population sufficiently large to have subdued the roughness of the wilderness-to have established society and social institutions to have founded several thriving Settlements and to have raised annual exports to the value of nearly a million sterling. But they will not find a population sufficiently large as in the United States, and in the older emigration fields of Canada and Australia-to have taken the cream of the country by monopolizing town and village sites, garden valleys, water privileges, and the crack agricultural "estate-creating" lands. The present population of New Zealand amounts to but a handful of 80,000 colonists, scattered over a country almost as large, and by nature certainly as fertile as the United Kingdom; and millions of acres, equal to the production of thirty bushels of wheat, or the grazing of five sheep per acre, are yet without trace of plough or fleece. The occurrence of the native disturbances described in the last chapter is much to be lamented. But we must remember that these affect only the north island, and that in all human probability these, ere long, will effectually and for ever be put down. Indeed, in a few months I trust we shall be able to

6

PROVINCIAL UNPOPULARITY.

liken these "native disturbances" to the thunder-storm, clearing the political atmosphere of the north, and producing for the Auckland and New Plymouth emigrant of 1861 such welcome fruits as good land and plenty of it, clear titles, and good laws.

The opinions I have expressed, both in the following pages and elsewhere, as to the folly of those who would split New Zealand into a dozen rival little settlements to be governed by a dozen fractious little Parliaments, have made me many enemies both among "Provincialists" in the colony, and among the various agents and employés of our Vestry-Governments who from time to time are despatched to this country; and for a person so unimportant as myself I have not, I think, been at all neglected by many of my fellow settlers in the matter of detraction and abuse. Happily, however, I am not an over-sensitive man, and can pursue the even tenor of my way less affected, perhaps, by my provincial unpopularity than I ought to be. As one utterly unconnected with Local Governments, Companies, or Associations -as one making no figure in public meetings, shows, demonstrations, or deputations,-I feel that in my own plain way I have done more to popularize New Zealand as an Emigration field, more to send her capital and labour, than perhaps any one individual who has ever taken part in the colonisation of the country. I know, too, that many of the views expressed in this volume will ultimately be the popular views; and I cannot but hope that the time will come when all my fellow Colonists-Centralists and Provincialists, private and public-will admit that in my long-continued but unpretentious advocacy of the young interests of our common country I have " done the state some service" and not worked altogether idly and in vain.

In conclusion, I have only to remark, that if there be any New Zealand information which the reader may think is not to be found in this volume, and which he would like to obtain, I should be happy to attempt to supply it, either by giving him a personal interview, or by replying to any first questions he might wish to put to me, sent to my town address, 5 Charing Cross, London.

Pannanich Lodge,

Ballater, Aberdeenshire.
Oct. 1, 1860.

SPANISH CLAIMS TO DISCOVERY.

7

CHAPTER II.

HISTORICAL SKETCH.

BETWEEN 1520 and 1610 the Spaniards made several voyages from their South American possessions in search of a Great South Land, the Terra Australis Incognita, "an exceeding rich gold countrie and fair land of diamonds and precious stones," which the old explorers and ancient mariners of those times fondly hoped to light on some day in the South Pacific.

In 1605, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Luis Vaez de Torres started on one of these voyages and discovered the islands now known as the New Hebrides. Here, in a storm, they parted company. Torres sailed north-east, and coasting New Guinea, discovered and passed through those dreaded straits which still bear his name. Might not Quiros, holding on south in continued search of the gold land (the realised "Diggings" of two centuries later) have been the real discoverer of New Zealand? At least, it is fairly conjectural that New Zealand was first discovered by some early Spanish navigator, inasmuch as there exists a remarkably correct Spanish chart of Dusky Bay, of very early date; and Dusky Bay was not a place which Tasman, the recognised discoverer of New Zealand forty years later, appears to have visited. Those who would here exalt the Spaniard and dethrone the Dutchman may further urge that the natives assert that the dog was not brought to New Zealand by their emigrant ancestors, but was introduced by some "strange ship" which once visited their shores; and that as "perro" is the Spanish, and "pero" the New Zealand word for dog, there is some ground for supposing that this "strange ship" was a Spanish ship.* Frenchmen, too,

*Too much weight, however, has been given to this evidence of words. It is said that perro or pero is a word evidently foreign to the Maori language. Now one Maori word for dog is kuri, the other péro, or péropéro, But there are many words like péro, such as the verb péra, to be like that;