In concluding this impei'fect sketch, it would be unpardonable to omit a 

 further and fuller reference to the fact, that this is the hundredth year since 

 the arrival, in New Zealand, of Captain Cook. He landed for the first time in 

 this country, in October, 1769, at Turanganui, which he afterwards named 

 Poverty Bay, — apparently because the ferocity of the Natives of that district 

 (of which we have lately had fresh and terrible experience), prevented him from 

 obtaining water and other supplies for his crew. "When, some months ago, I 

 visited Turanganui, and stood on the spot where tradition reports that the 

 illustrious navigator first set his foot on these shores, the thought struck me 

 that it would have cheered his gallant spirit, amidst his many dangers and 

 distresses, if his imagination (a faculty seldom wholly wanting in great men) 

 could have portrayed the future destiny of the Terra Australia — of the vast 

 Continent and Islands of the Southern Ocean — previously invested, like the 

 fabled Atlantis of old, by the reports of the early Dutch and Spanish navigators 

 — with a dim and mysterious interest, but which Cook first made practically 

 known to his own countrymen, and, through them to the civilized world. It 

 would, however, have required prophetic inspiration to foretell, that in the 

 " Great Southern Land," in which Cook first recommended the foundation of 

 British settlements, there would arise, within less than a century after that 

 recommendation, a British Empire, embracing a territory nearly as large as 

 Europe, and already far surpassing in wealth, in trade, in all the arts which 

 advance and adorn civilization, those American colonies, which, a hundred 

 years ago, were on the eve of renouncing their allegiance to the mother 

 country. It need scarcely be mentioned, among the many obvious proofs and 

 illustrations of these statements, that, in 1769, the trade of all the Colonies 

 which now form the American Republic and the Dominion of Canada, did not 

 much exceed in value three millions sterling yearly ; whereas the trade of New 

 Zealand alone now reaches nearly ten millions sterling, while the annual trade 

 of all the Australasian Colonies reckoned together amounts to sixty millions 

 sterling. Again, the richest and most populous city in North America, a 

 century back, was Boston, which, though then more than one hundred and 

 fifty years old, contained only 20,000 inhabitants. Now, in 1869, Melbourne, 

 the largest and wealthiest city in the southern hemisphere, though barely 

 thirty-five years old, contains not far from 150,000 inhabitants. 



Many here present must be familiar with the celebrated passage in one 

 of the most eloquent speeches of Edmund Burke, where the aged statesman, 

 Lord Bathurst, is supposed to have foreseen, in his youth, with the aid of a 

 heavenly guide, the rise of American colonization from insignificance to 

 greatness during his own lifetime — that is, during the first seventy years of 

 the eighteenth century. " Suppose," said the brilliant orator, " that the angel 

 of the auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of 

 the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had 



