THE NEW ZEALANDERS
"No hungry generations tread thee down."
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 decreasing, the half-castes increasing rather rapidly. 315,000 sheep, 30,000 cattle, many horses, and much land, a little of which they cultivate, some of which they let, support them comfortably enough. The yellows, some 3,500 Chinese, are a true alien element. They do not marry--78 European and 14 Chinese wives are all they have, at any rate in the Colony. They are not met in social intercourse or industrial partnership by any cla.s.s of colonists, but work apart as gold-diggers, market-gardeners, and small shop-keepers, and are the same inscrutable, industrious, insanitary race of gamblers and opium-smokers in New Zealand as elsewhere. At one time they were twice as numerous. Then a poll-tax of 10 was levied on all new-comers. Still, a few score came in every year, paying the tax, or having it paid for them; and about as many went home to China, usually with 200 or more about them. In 1895 the tax was raised to 50, and this seems likely to bring the end quickly.
Despised, disliked, dwindling, the Chinese are bound soon to disappear from the colony.
Of the 740,000 whites, more than half have been born in the country, and many are the children, and a few even the grandchildren, of New Zealand-born parents. An insular race is therefore in process of forming. What are its characteristics? As the Scotch would say--what like is it? Does it give any signs of qualities, physical or mental, tending to distinguish it from Britons, Australians, or North Americans? The answer is not easy. Nothing is more tempting, and at the same time more risky, than to thus generalize and speculate too soon. As was said at the outset, New Zealand has taken an almost perverse delight in upsetting expectations. Nevertheless, certain points are worth noting which may, at any rate, help readers to draw conclusions of their own.
The New Zealanders are a British race in a sense in which the inhabitants of the British Islands scarcely are. That is to say, they consist of English, Scotch, and Irish, living together, meeting daily, intermarrying, and having children whose blood with each generation becomes more completely blended and mingled. The Celtic element is larger than in England or in the Scottish lowlands. As against this there is a certain, though small, infusion of Scandinavian and German blood; very little indeed of any other foreign race. The Scotch muster strongest in the south and the Irish in the mining districts. In proportion to their numbers the Scotch are more prominent than other races in politics, commerce, finance, sheep farming, and the work of education. Among the seventy European members of the New Zealand House of Representatives there is seldom more than one Smith, Brown, or Jones, and hardly ever a single Robinson; but the usual number of McKenzies is three. The Irish do not crowd into the towns, or attempt to capture the munic.i.p.al machinery, as in America, nor are they a source of political unrest or corruption. Their Church"s antagonism to the National Education system has excluded many able Catholics from public life. The Scandinavians and Germans very seldom figure there.
Some 1,700 Jews live in the towns, and seem more numerous and prominent in the north than in the south. They belong to the middle cla.s.s; many are wealthy. These are often charitable and public-spirited, and active in munic.i.p.al rather than in parliamentary life.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAORIS CONVEYING GUESTS IN A CANOE
Photo by Beattie & Sanderson, Auckland.]
Among the Churches the Church of England claims 40 per cent. of the people; the Presbyterians 23 per cent.; other Protestants, chiefly Methodists, 17 per cent.; and Catholics 14. Methodists seem increasing rather faster than any other denomination. Though the National School system is secular, it is not anti-Christian. 11,000 persons teach 105,000 children in Sunday-schools. In the census returns about two per cent. of the population object or neglect to specify their religion; only about one per cent. style themselves as definitely outside the Christian camp.
The average density of population throughout the Colony"s 104,000 square miles is somewhat less than eight to the mile. Two-thirds of the New Zealanders live in the country, in villages, or in towns of less than 5,000 inhabitants. Even the larger towns cover, taken together, about seventy square miles of ground--not very cramping limits for a quarter of a million of people. Nor is there overcrowding in houses; less than five persons to a house is the proportion. There are very few spots in the towns where trees, flower gardens, and gra.s.s are not close at hand, and even orchards and fields not far away. The dwelling-houses, almost all of wood, seldom more than two storeys high, commonly show by their shady verandahs and veiling creepers that the New Zealand sun is warmer than the English. Bright, windy, and full of the salt of the ocean, the air is perhaps the wholesomest on earth, and the Island race naturally shows its influence. Bronzed faces display on every side the power of sun and wind. Pallor is rare; so also is the more delicate pink and white of certain English skins.
The rainier, softer skies of the western coasts have their result in smoother skins and better complexions on that side of the Islands than in the drier east. On the warm sh.o.r.es of Auckland there are signs of a more slightly-built breed, but not in the interior, which almost everywhere rises quickly into hill or plateau. Athletic records show that the North Islanders hold their own well enough against Southern rivals. More heavily built as a rule than the Australians, the New Zealanders have darker hair and thicker eyebrows than is common with the Anglo-Saxon of Northern England and Scotland. Tall and robust, the men do not carry themselves as straight as the nations which have been through the hands of the drill-sergeant. The women--who are still somewhat less numerous than the males--are as tall, but not usually as slight, as those of the English upper cla.s.ses. To sum up, the New Zealand race shows no sign of beating the best British, or of producing an average equal to that best; but its average is undoubtedly better than the general British average. The puny myriads of the manufacturing towns have no counterpart in the Colony, and, if humanitarian laws can prevent it, never should. The birth-rate and death-rate are both strikingly low: the latter, 9.14 per 1,000, is the lowest in the world. The birth-rate has fallen from 37.95 in 1881 to 25.96 in 1897. The yearly number of births has in effect remained the same for sixteen years, though the population has grown thirty per cent. larger in the period. The gain by immigration is still appreciable, though not large.
Their speech is that of communities who are seldom utterly illiterate, and as seldom scholarly. I have listened in vain for any national tw.a.n.g, drawl, or peculiar intonation. The young people, perhaps, speak rather faster than English of the same age, that is all. On the other hand, anything like picturesque, expressive language within the limits of grammar is rarely found. Many good words in daily use in rural England have been dropped in the Colony. Brook, village, moor, heath, forest, dale, copse, meadow, glade are among them. Young New Zealanders know what these mean because they find them in books, but would no more think of employing them in speaking than of using "inn,"
"tavern," or "ale," when they can say "hotel," "public-house," or "beer." Their place is taken by slang. Yet if a nation is known by its slang, the New Zealanders must be held disposed to borrow rather than to originate, for theirs is almost wholly a mixture of English, American, and Australian. Most of the mining terms come from California; most of the pastoral from Australia, though "flat" and "creek" are, of course, American. "Ranche" and "gulch" have not crossed the Pacific; their place is taken by "run" and "gulley." On the other hand, "lagoon" has replaced the English "pond," except in the case of artificial water. Pasture is "feed," herd and flock alike become "mob." "Country" is used as a synonym for grazing; "good country" means simply good grazing land. A man tramping in search of work is a "swagman" or "swagger," from the "swag" or roll of blankets he carries on his back. Very few words have been adopted from the vigorous and expressive Maori. The convenient "mana," which covers prestige, authority, and personal magnetism; "whare," a rough hut; "taihoa," equivalent to the Mexican _manana_; and "ka pai," ""tis good," are exceptions. The South Island colonists misp.r.o.nounce their beautiful Maori place-names murderously. Even in the North Island the average bushman will speak of the pukatea tree as "bucketeer," and not to call the poro-poro shrub "bull-a-bull" would be considered affectation. There is or was in the archives of the Taranaki Farmers"
Club a patriotic song which rises to the notable lines--
"And as for food, the land is full Of that delicious bull-a-bull!"
In Canterbury you would be stared at if you called Timaru anything but "Timmeroo." In Otago Lake Wakatipu becomes anything, from "Wokkertip"
to "Wackatipoo"; and I have heard a cultured man speak of Puke-tapu as "Buck-a-tap."
The intellectual average is good. Thanks in great part to Gibbon Wakefield"s much-abused Company, New Zealand was fortunate in the mental calibre of her pioneer settlers, and in their determined efforts to save their children from degenerating into loutish, half-educated provincials. Looking around in the Colony at the sons of these pioneers, one finds them on all sides doing useful and honourable work. They make upright civil servants, conscientious clergymen, schoolmasters, lawyers, and journalists, pushing agents, resourceful engineers, steady-going and often prosperous farmers, and strong, quick, intelligent labourers. Of the "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control" needful to make a sound race they have an encouraging share. Of artistic, poetic, or scientific talent, of wit, originality, or inventiveness, there is yet but little sign. In writing they show facility often, distinction never; in speech fluency and force of argument, and even, sometimes, lucidity, but not a flash of the loftier eloquence. Nor has the time yet arrived for Young New Zealand to secure the chief prizes of its own community--such posts and distinctions as go commonly to men fairly advanced in years. No native of the country has yet been its Prime Minister or sat amongst its supreme court judges or bishops. A few colonial-born have held subordinate Cabinet positions, but the dozen leading Members of Parliament are just now all British-born. So are the leading doctors, engineers, university professors, and preachers; the leading barrister is a Shetlander. Two or three, and two or three only, of the first-cla.s.s positions in the civil service are filled by natives. On the whole, Young New Zealand is, as yet, better known by collective usefulness than by individual distinction.
The grazing of sheep and cattle, dairying, agriculture, and mining for coal and gold, are the chief occupations. 47,000 holdings are under cultivation. The manufactures grow steadily, and already employ 40,000 hands. A few figures will give some notion of the industrial and commercial position. The number of the sheep is a little under 20,000,000; of cattle, 1,150,000; of horses, 250,000. The output of the factories and workshops is between 10,000,000 and 11,000,000 sterling a year; the output of gold, about 1,000,000; that of coal, about 900,000 tons. The export of wool is valued at 4,250,000. Among the exports for 1897 were: 2,700,000 frozen sheep and lambs; 66,000 cwt. cheese, and 71,000 cwt b.u.t.ter; 433,000 worth of kauri gum; 427,000 worth of grain. The exports and imports of the Colony for the year 1897 were a little over 10,000,000 and 8,000,000 sterling respectively. It would appear that, taking a series of years, about three-quarters of the Colony"s trade has been with the mother-country, and nearly all the remainder with other parts of the Empire. The public debt is about 44,000,000; the revenue, 5,000,000. The State owns 2,061 miles of railway.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A RURAL STATE SCHOOL
Photo by BEATTIE & SANDERSON, Auckland.]
Socially the colonists are what might be expected from their environment. Without an aristocracy, without anything that can be called a plutocracy, without a solitary millionaire, New Zealand is also virtually without that hopeless thing, the hereditary pauper and begetter of paupers. It may be doubted whether she has a dozen citizens with more than 10,000 a year apiece. On the other hand, the average of wealth and income is among the highest in the world.
Education is universal. The lectures of the professors of the State University--which is an examining body, with five affiliated colleges in five different towns--are well attended by students of both s.e.xes.
The examiners are English; the degrees may be taken by either s.e.x indifferently. Not two per cent. of the Colony"s children go to the secondary schools, though they are good and cheap. It is her primary education that is the strength and pride of New Zealand. It is that which makes the list of crimes light. Criminals and paupers are less often produced than let in from the outside. The regulations relating to the exclusion of the physically or mentally tainted are far too lax, and will bring their own punishment. The colonists, honestly anxious that their country shall in days to come show a fine and happy race, are strangely blind to the laws of heredity. They carelessly admit those whose children to the third and fourth generation must be a degrading influence. On the other hand, the Colony gains greatly by the regular and deliberate importation of English experts. Every year a small but important number of these are engaged and brought out.
They vary from bishops and professors to skilled artizans and drill-instructors; but whatever they are, their quality is good, and they usually make New Zealand the home of their families.
With wealth diffused, and caste barriers unknown, a New Zealander, when meeting a stranger, does not feel called upon to act as though in dread of finding in the latter a sponge, toady, or swindler. Nor has the colonist to consider how the making of chance acquaintances may affect his own social standing. In his own small world his social standing is a settled thing, and cannot be injured otherwise than by his own folly or misconduct. Moreover, most of the Islanders are, or have been, brought face to face with the solitude of nature, and many of all cla.s.ses have travelled. These things make them more sociable, self-confident, and unsuspicious than the middle cla.s.ses of older countries. Such hospitality as they can show is to them a duty, a custom, and a pleasure.
The Islanders are almost as fond of horses and athletics as their Australian cousins. They are not nearly such good cricketers, but play football better, are often good yachtsmen, and hold their own in rowing, running, jumping, and throwing weights. Fox-hunting is a forbidden luxury, as the fox may not be imported. But they have some packs of harriers, and ride to them in a way which would not be despised in the gra.s.s counties at Home. There are fair polo teams too.
They are just as fond of angling and shooting as the race elsewhere.
Capital trout-fishing, some good deer-shooting, and a fine supply of rabbits, hares, and wild ducks help to console the sportsman for the scarcity of dangerous game. As might be expected in an educated people pa.s.sionately fond of out-door exercises, well fed and clothed, and with sun and sea air for tonics, drink is not their national vice.
Gambling, especially over horse races, has more claim to that bad eminence. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the land rings with denunciations of drink, while comparatively little has until quite lately been said against gambling.
Of colonial art there is not much to be said. Sculpture is represented by an occasional statue brought from England. Architecture in its higher form is an unknown quant.i.ty. Painting is beginning to struggle towards the light, chiefly in the form of water-colour drawings.
Political satire finds expression in cartoons, for the most part of that crude sort which depicts public men as horrific ogres and malformed monsters of appalling disproportions. Music, reading, and flower gardening are the three chief refining pastimes. The number and size of the musical societies is worthy of note. So are the booksellers" shops and free libraries. The books are the same as you see in London shops. There is no colonial literature. As for flowers, New Zealanders promise to be as fond of them as the j.a.panese. There is a newspaper of some description in the Islands to about every 1,500 adults. Every locality may thus count upon every item of its local news appearing in print. The Colonists who support this system may be a.s.sumed to get what they want, though, of course, under it quality is to some extent sacrificed to number. As a cla.s.s the newspapers are honest, decent, and energetic as purveyors of news. Every now and then public opinion declares itself on one side, though the better known newspapers are on the other. But on the average their influence is not slight. There is no one leading journal. Of the four or five larger morning newspapers, the _Otago Daily Times_ shows perhaps the most practical knowledge of politics and grasp of public business. It is partisan, but not ferociously so, except in dealing with some pet aversion, like the present Minister of Lands. You may read in it, too, now and then, what is a rarity indeed in colonial journalism--a paragraph written in a spirit of pure, good-natured fun.
The working cla.s.ses are better, the others more carelessly, dressed than in England. The workpeople are at the same time more nomadic and thriftier. Amongst the middle cla.s.ses, industrious as they are, unusual thrift is rare. Their hospitality and kindliness do not prevent them from being hard bargainers in business.
Compared with the races from which they have sprung, the Islanders seem at once less conventional, less on their guard, and more neighbourly and sympathetic in minor matters. In politics they are fonder of change and experiment, more venturesome, more empirical, law-abiding, but readier to make and alter laws. Hypercritical and eaten up by local and personal jealousies in public life, they are less loyal to parties and leaders, and less capable of permanent organization for a variety of objects. They can band themselves together to work for one reform, but for the higher and more complex organization which seeks to obtain a general advance along the line of progress by honourable co-operation and wise compromise, they show no great apt.i.tude. In politics their pride is that they are practical, and, indeed, they are perhaps less ready than Europeans to deify theories and catchwords. They are just as suspicious of wit and humour in public men, and just as p.r.o.ne to mistake dulness for solidity. To their credit may be set down a useful impatience of grime, gloom, injustice, and public discomfort and bungling.
In social life they are more sober and more moral, yet more indifferent to the opinion of any society or set. Not that they run after mere eccentrics; they have a wholesome reserve of contempt for such. British in their dislike to take advice, their humbler position among the nations makes them more ready to study and learn from foreign example. Though there is no division into two races as in London, it would be absurd to pretend that social distinctions are unknown. Each town with its rural district has its own "society." The best that can be said for this inst.i.tution is that it is not, as a rule, dictated to by mere money. It is made up of people with incomes mostly ranging from 500 to 2,000, with a sprinkling of bachelors of even more modest means. Ladies and gentlemen too poor to entertain others will nevertheless be asked everywhere if they have either brightness or intellect, or have won creditable positions. You see little social arrogance, no attempt at display. Picnics, garden parties, and outings in boats and yachts are amongst the pleasanter functions. A yacht in New Zealand means a cutter able to sail well, but quite without any luxury in her fittings. The indoor gatherings are smaller, more kindly, less formal, less glittering copies of similar affairs in the mother country.
Brilliant talkers there are none. But any London visitor who might imagine that he was about to find himself in a company of clownish provincials would be much mistaken. A very large proportion of colonists have travelled and even lived in more lands than one. They have encountered vicissitudes and seen much that is odd and varied in nature and human nature. In consequence they are often pleasant and interesting talkers, refreshingly free from mannerism or self-consciousness.
They both gain and lose by being without a leisured cla.s.s; it narrows their horizon, but saves them from a vast deal of hysterical nonsense, social mischief and blatant self-advertising. Though great readers of English newspapers and magazines, and much influenced thereby in their social, ethical, and literary views, their interest in English and European politics is not very keen. A cherished article of their faith is that Russia is England"s irreconcileable foe, and that war between the two is certain. Both their geographical isolation and their const.i.tution debar them from having any foreign policy. In this they contentedly acquiesce. Loyal to the mother country, resolved not to be absorbed in Australia, they are torpid concerning Imperial Federation.
Their own local and general politics absorb any interest and leisure not claimed by business and pastimes. Their isolation is, no doubt, partly the cause of this. It takes their steamers from four to six days to reach Australia, and nearly as long to travel from one end of their own land to the other. Most of them can hardly hope to see Europe, or even Asia or America, or any civilized race but their own.
This is perhaps the greatest of their disadvantages. Speedier pa.s.sage across the oceans which divide them from the rest of the human race must always be in the forefront of their aims as a nation.
Industrious, moral, strong, it is far too soon to complain of this race because it has not in half a century produced a genius from amongst its scanty numbers. Its mission has not been to do that, but to lay the foundations of a true civilization in two wild and lonely, though beautiful, islands. This has been a work calling for solid rather than brilliant qualities--for a people morally and physically sound and wholesome, and gifted with "grit" and concentration. There is such a thing as collective ability. The men who will carve statues, paint pictures, and write books will come, no doubt, in good time. The business of the pioneer generations has been to turn a bloodstained or silent wilderness into a busy and interesting, a happy, if not yet a splendid, state.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books about New Zealand are numerous enough. A critic need not be fastidious to regret that most of them are not better written, useful and interesting as they are in the ma.s.s. Every sort of information about the country is to be got from them, but not always with pleasure or ease. To get it you must do a good deal of the curst hard reading which comes from easy writing. And even then, for the most part, it is left to your own imaginative power to see--
"The beauty, and the wonder, and the power, The shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades, Changes, surprises."
The undoubted and agreeable exceptions, too, require in you some knowledge of the Islands, if they are to be enjoyed. How is that knowledge to be obtained? A hard-headed student with a hearty appet.i.te for facts might, of course, start with F.J. Moss"s careful and accurate school history and the latest Government Year Book in his hand, and would soon be well on his way. Those who like easier paths to knowledge may try Edward Wakefield"s "New Zealand After Fifty Years," or Gisborne"s "Colony of New Zealand." When one comes to periods, districts, or special subjects, the choice is much wider.
To begin at the beginning; "Tasman"s Log" is little but dry bones; of Cook and Crozet I have written elsewhere. Of the writers who tell of Alsatian days, none is worth naming in the same breath with Maning.
Personally I like Polack and Savage the best of them, despite the lumbering pretentiousness and doubtful veracity of the former. Earle and Major Cruise are more truthful than readable--conditions which are exactly reversed in the case of Rutherford. If, as is said, Lord Brougham helped to write Rutherford"s narrative, he did his work very well; but after the exposure of its "facts" by Archdeacon W.L.
Williams, it can only be read as the yarn of a runaway sailor, who had reasons for not telling the whole truth, and a capacity and knowledge of local colour which would have made him a capital romance-writer, had he been an educated man. As a picture of the times, Rutherford"s story in the "Library of Entertaining Knowledge" will always, however, be worth reading.
The missionaries have not been as fortunate in their chroniclers as they deserve. The tumid cant of Nicholas is grotesque enough to be more amusing than the tract-and-water style of Yate and Barret Marshall, or the childishness of Richard Taylor. Much better in every way are Buller"s (Wesleyan) "Forty Years In New Zealand," and Tucker"s "Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn."
Among the descriptions of the country as it was when the colonists found it, Edward Shortland"s account of the whalers and Maoris of the South Island, Jerningham Wakefield"s of the founding of the New Zealand Company"s settlements, Dieffenbach"s travels, and Bidwill"s unpretending little pamphlet telling of his tramp to the volcanoes and hot lakes in 1842, seem to me at once to tell most and be easiest to read.
On the Maoris, their myths, legends, origin, manners, and customs, William Colenso is admittedly the chief living authority. For his views it is necessary to go to pamphlets, and to search the Transactions of the New Zealand Inst.i.tute, where much other good material will also reward the seeker. To John White"s ill-jointed but invaluable compilation "The Ancient History of the Maori," every student henceforth will have to turn. The selections therein from the papers of Stack on the South Island Maoris, from Travers" "Life of Te Rauparaha," and Wilson"s "Story of Te Waharoa," are less stony than the more genealogical portions. Sir George Grey"s collection of the historical and legendary traditions of the race has not been superseded. Messrs. Percy Smith and Edward Tregear edit the valuable journal of the Polynesian a.s.sociation; the former has made a special study of the origin and wanderings of the Maori race, the latter has produced the Comparative Maori-Polynesian Dictionary. General Robley has written the book on Maori tattooing; Mr. Hamilton is bringing out in parts what promises to be a very complete and worthily ill.u.s.trated account of Maori art.
As narratives of the first twenty years of the Colony two books stand out from among many: Thomson"s "Story of New Zealand," and Attorney--General Swainson"s "New Zealand and its Colonization." It would not be easy to find a completer contrast than the gossipy style of the chatty army medico and the dry, official manner of the precise lawyer, formerly and for upwards of fifteen years Her Majesty"s Attorney-General for New Zealand, as he is at pains to tell you on his t.i.tle-page. But Swainson"s is the fairest and most careful account of the time from the official, philo-Maori and anti-Company side, and may be taken as a safe antidote to Jerningham Wakefield, Sir W.T. Power, Hursthouse, and others. A comparison with Rusden, when the two are on the same ground, shows Swainson to be the better writer all round. Of Rusden"s "History of New Zealand" no one doubts the honest intent. The author, believing the Maori to be a n.o.ble, valiant, and persecuted race, befriended by the missionaries and those who took missionary advice, and robbed and cheated by almost all others, says so in three long, vehement, sincere, but not fascinating volumes, largely composed of extracts from public papers and speeches. Sweeping condemnation of the Public Works policy, of Radical reforms, and recent Socialistic experiments, complete his tale. The volumes have their use, but are not a history of New Zealand.
Of early days in the pastoral provinces we get contemporary sketches by Samuel Butler, L.J. Kennaway, Lady Barker, and Archdeacon Paul.
Butler"s is the best done picture of the country, Kennaway"s the exactest of the settlers" every-day rough-and-tumble haps and mishaps, and Lady Barker"s the brightest. One of the volumes of General Mundy"s "Our Antipodes" gives a nice, light sketch of things as they were in the North Island in the first years of Governor Grey. Dr. Hocken"s recent book has at once become the recognised authority on the first years of Otago, and also has interesting chapters on the South Island before settlement. Fitzgerald"s selections from G.o.dley"s writings and speeches is made more valuable by the excellent biographical sketch with which it opens. Dr. Richard Garnett"s admirable "Life of Gibbon Wakefield" is the event of this year"s literature from the point of view of New Zealanders.
Of the books on the Eleven Years" War from 1860 to 1871, Sir William Fox"s easily carries away the palm for vigour of purpose and performance. Sir William was in hot indignation when he wrote it, and some of his warmth glows in its pages. It is a pity that he only dealt with the years 1863-65. Generals Carey and Alexander supply the narrative of the doings of the regulars; Lieutenant Gudgeon that of the militia"s achievements. General Carey handles the pen well enough; not so his gallant brother-soldier. Of Gudgeon"s two books I much prefer the Reminiscences, which on the whole tell more about the war than any other volume one can name. Sir John Gorst describes the King Movement and his own experiences in the King"s country. Swainson takes up his parable against the Waitara purchase.
Gisborne"s "Rulers and Statesmen of New Zealand," though not a connected history, is written with such undoubted fairness and personal knowledge, and in so workmanlike, albeit good--natured, a way, as to have a permanent interest. Most of the many portraits which are reproduced in its pages are correct likenesses, but it is the pen pictures which give the book its value.
Of volumes by travellers who devote more or less s.p.a.ce to New Zealand, the most noteworthy are Dilke"s brilliant "Greater Britain," the volumes of Anthony Trollope, and Michael Davitt, and Froude"s thoughtful, interesting, but curiously inaccurate "Oceana." Mennell"s serviceable "Dictionary of Australasian Biography" gives useful details concerning the pioneer colonists.