swamps
New Zealand showed the most completely unoccupied soil of any fertile
and temperate land on the globe. It seems possible that until about
five or six hundred years ago she had no human inhabitants whatever.
Her lakes and rivers had but few fish, her birds were not specially
numerous, her grasses were not to be compared in their nourishing
qualities with the English. Of animals there were virtually none.
Even the rat before mentioned, and the now extinct dog of the Maori
villages, were Maori importations from Polynesia not many centuries
ago.

Not only, therefore, have English forms of life been of necessity
drawn upon to fill the void spaces, but other countries have furnished
their quota. The dark eucalypt of Tasmania, with its heavy-hanging,
languid leaves, is the commonest of exotic trees. The artificial
stiffness and regularity of the Norfolk Island pine, and the
sweet-smelling golden blooms of the Australian wattle, are sights
almost as familiar in New Zealand as in their native lands. The sombre
pines of California and the macro carpa cypress cover thousands
of acres. The merino sheep brought from Spain, _via_ Saxony and
Australia, is the basis of the flocks. The black swan and magpie
represent the birds of New Holland. The Indian minah, after becoming
common, is said to be retreating before the English starling. The
first red deer came from Germany. And side by side with these
strangers and with the trees and plants which colonists call
specifically "English"--for the word "British" is almost unknown in
the Colony--the native flora is beginning to be cultivated in
gardens and grounds. Neglected by the first generation, it is better
appreciated by their children--themselves natives of the soil.

In the north and warmer island the traveller also meets sharp
contrasts. These, however, except in the provinces of Wellington and
Napier, where the Tararua-Ruahine spine plays to some extent the part
taken by the Alps in the South Island, are not so much between east
and west as between the coasts and the central plateau. For the most
part, all the coasts, except the south-east, are, or have been,
forest-clad. Nearly everywhere they are green, hilly and abundantly
watered; windy, but not plagued with extremes of cold and heat. Frost
touches them but for a short time in mid-winter.

[Illustration: THE WHITE TERRACE, ROTOMAHANA]

The extreme south and north of the North Island could hardly, by any
stretch of im