4 GENERAL REMARKS. [CHAP. I. 



sufficient in quantity for steam-engines and manu- 

 factories; its coasts are studded with harbours and 

 inlets of the sea ; it is intersected by rivers and 

 rivulets ; its position between two large continents 

 is extremely favourable ; in short, it unites in itself 

 everything requisite for the support of a large po- 

 pulation in addition to the native inhabitants. No 

 other country possesses such facilities for the esta- 

 blishment of a middle class, and especially of a 

 prosperous small peasantry, insuring greatness to 

 the colony in times to come. 



It is, I conceive, no small praise to a country that 

 in it labour and industry can procure independence, 

 and even affluence ; that in it no droughts destroy 

 the fruits of the colonist's toil, no epidemic or pes- 

 tilence endangers his family ; that with a little 

 exertion he may render himself independent of 

 foreign supply for his food ; and that when he looks 

 around him he can almost fancy himself in England 

 instead of at the Antipodes, were it not that in his 

 adopted country an eternal verdure covers the 

 groves and forests, and gives the land an aspect of 

 unequalled freshness and fertility. More, however, 

 than all these advantages were expected by the 

 colonists who in the last two years have flocked by 

 thousands to New Zealand. They found to their 

 surprise and disappointment almost entirely a moun- 

 tainous country, the mountains being in many cases 

 steep and intersected by ravines instead of valleys ; 

 whilst the cultivable land, instead of being conti- 



