1835.] WAIMATE. 



427 



native tongue to the whole family. After breakfast I rambler! 

 about the gardens and farm. This was a market-day, when the 

 natives of the surrounding hamlets bring their potatoes, Indian 

 corn, or pigs, to exchange for blankets, tobacco, and sometimes, 

 through the persuasions of the missionaries, for soap. Mr. Da- 

 vies's eldest son, who manages a farm of his own, is the man of 

 business in the market. The children of the missionaries, who 

 came while young to the island, understand the language better 

 than their parents, and can get anything more readily done by 

 the natives. 



A little before noon Messrs. Williams and Davies walked with 

 me to part of a neighbouring forest, to show me the famous kauri 

 pine. I measured one of these noble trees, and found it thirty- 

 one feet in circumference above the roots. There was another 

 close by, which I did not see, thirty-three feet ; and I heard of 

 one no less than forty feet. These trees are remarkable for their 

 smooth cylindrical boles, which run up to a height of sixty, and 

 even ninety feet, with a nearly equal diameter, and without a 

 single branch. The crown of branches at the summit is out of 

 all proportion small to the trunk ; and the leaves are likewise 

 small compared with the branches. The forest was here almost 

 composed of the kauri ; and the largest trees, from the parallelism 

 of their sides, stood up like gigantic columns of wood. The 

 timber of the kauri is the most valuable production of the island ; 

 moreover, a quantity of resin oozes from the bark, which is sold 

 at a penny a pound to the Americans, but its use was then un- 

 known. Some of the New Zealand forests must be impenetrable 

 to an extraordinary degree. Mr. Matthews informed me that 

 one forest only thirty-four miles in width, and separating two 

 inhabited districts, had only lately, for the first time, been crossed. 

 He and another missionary, each with a party of about fifty men, 

 undertook to open a road ; but it cost them more than a fort- 

 night's labour ! In the woods I saw very few birds. With re- 

 gard to animals, it is a most remarkable fact, that so large an 

 island, extending over more than 700 miles in latitude, and in 

 many parts ninety broad, with varied stations, a fine climate, and 

 land of all heights, from 14,000 feet downwards, with the excep- 

 tion of a small rat, did not possess one indigenous animal. The 

 several species of that gigantic genus of birds, the Deinornis, 



