pace had been cleared of trees, in the centre of which three very tall
posts, driven into the ground in the form of a triangle, supported an
immense pile of baskets of coomeras. The tribe of Teeperree[AM] of
Wangarooa[AN] was invited to participate in the rejoicings, which
consisted of a number of dances performed round the pole, succeeded by a
very splendid feast; and when Teeperree's men were going away, they
received a present of as many coomeras as they could carry with them."
In New Zealand all the cultivated fields are strictly "tabooed," as well
as the people employed in cultivating them, who live upon the spot while
they proceed with their labours, and are not permitted to pass the
boundary until they are terminated; nor are any others allowed to
trespass upon the sacred enclosure.

We have already mentioned more than once the lofty forests of New
Zealand. Of these, considered as a mere ornament to the country, all
who have seen them speak in terms of the highest admiration. Anderson,
the surgeon whom Cook took with him on board the "Resolution" in his
third voyage, describes them as "flourishing with a vigour almost
superior to anything that imagination can conceive, and affording an
august prospect to those who are delighted with the grand and beautiful
works of Nature."

"It is impossible," says Nicholas, "to imagine, in the wildest and most
picturesque walks of Nature, a sight more sublime and majestic, or which
can more forcibly challenge the admiration of the traveller, than a New
Zealand forest."

And indeed, when we are told that the trees rise generally to the height
of from eighty to a hundred feet, straight as a mast and without a
branch, and are then crowned with tops of such umbrageous foliage that
the rays of the sun, in endeavouring to pierce through them, can hardly
make more than a dim twilight in the lonely recesses below, so that
herbage cannot grow there, and the rank soil produces nothing but a
thick spread of climbing and intertwisted underwood, we may conceive how
imposing must be the gloomy grandeur of these gigantic and impenetrable
groves.

[Illustration: Scene in a New Zealand forest.]

In the woods in the neighbourhood of Poverty Bay, Cook says he found
trees of above twenty different sorts, altogether unknown to anybody
on board; and almost every new district which he visited afterwards
presented to him a profusion of new varieties. But the trees that have
as yet chiefly attrac