1835.] WAIMATE. ‘ 427 
native tongue to the whole family. After breakfast I rambled 
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, 
