276 



DICKSON ON 



the bright breezy light-and-shadow casting character of the 

 climate is peculiarly favourable both to the display and to the 

 enjoyment of scenery ; I think we may say that in the com- 

 bination of those great natural features which constitute the 

 foundation of fine scenery, New Zealand is unsurpassed by 

 any country in the world. She displays noble forests, snow- 

 capped mountains shooting up 10,000 feet from a sea of green 

 and wooded, up to the line of snow, tracts of rolling cham- 

 paign country dells, valleys, rivers, and rivulets innumerable, 

 and 3,000 miles of bay and ocean coast. 



" New Zealand, too, with all these elements of fine scenery, 

 this stock of f raw beauty/ is a fertile cultivable country, 

 where plough, sickle, and mill would singularly enrich and 

 brighten the landscape. The plough could not improve the 

 natural beauty of a country like the Scottish highlands, because 

 the Scotch highlands are not peculiarly plocghable ; and the 

 plough, if every ploughman were a Mechi, could not create the 

 * beautiful 5 in a country like the Lincolnshire fens, or the 

 plains of Belgium. But in a wild, fertile, woody country, 

 more resembling a combination of Derbyshire and Devonshire, 

 it is evident that cultivation would singularly improve the 

 beauty of the scenery. 



"Picturesque sites and sheltered nooks for hamlet, tower, 

 and town, homestead, cottage, and castle, are multitudinous in 

 New Zealand, and when cultivation has given colour to the 

 landscape, and contrast to the universal background of green ; 

 when the hills are more dotted with sheep, and the valleys 

 more golden with corn ; when the pheasant whirrs from the 

 brake, and the fox bursts from the cover, New Zealand will 

 offer a thousand views which even a Turner might cross the 

 seas to paint. 



THE MAORI, OR NATIVE ISLANDER. 

 "By superficial observers who have had only slight means of 

 judging, the New Zealanclers have been both over-rated and 



