34 
as we had heard at school, it is winter there, when we have sum- 
mer; and day there, when we have night. Of course, these facts 
appearing so very contradictory within the limited range of our 
childish comprehension , have long since lost every trace of strange- 
ness with the advance of a maturcr age; but nevertheless Now Zea- 
land still remains to us a most wonderful country. 
Far from all continental shores, and out of the limits encircling 
the numerous clusters of islands in the equatorial zone of the Pacific 
Ocean, it towers amid the greatest mass of waters on the face of 
the earth , washed by the ever restless waves of the vast ocean ; 
more isolated than any other land of equal extent. 
Not inhabited probably till within late centuries of the history 
of mail, and then but thinly populated, and only along the coasts 
and along the banks of navigable rivers, — New Zealand has fully 
preserved within its interior, the originality and peculiarity of its 
remarkable animal and vegetable kingdoms up to our present time. 
No monuments of any kind; no tombs of kings, no ruins of cities, 
no time-honoured fragments of shattered palace-domes and temples, 
are there to tell of the deeds of ages or nations past and gone. 
But Nature, through her mightiest agencies, through fire and water, 
has stamped her history in indelible characters on the virgin-soil 
of the island. The wild Alpine heights of the South , towering in 
silent grandeur to the sky, their lofty summits crested with fields 
of ice and decked with glacier-robes; the Volcanoes of the North 
looming up into the regions of perpetual snow , glisten from afar, 
dazzling the wondering eyes of the mariner, as lie; approaches the 
coast. Fertile and well-watered alluvial plains are there awaiting the 
enterprising settlor, — the virgin-soil, on which he founds a new 
home; a land, blessed with the most genial climate, where lie has 
but to battle with and subdue the wilderness to reap the never 
failing fruits of his labours. 
New Zealand consists of two large and several small islands, 
forming a broad stripe of land extending from South-west to North- 
east, the North-end of which is prolonged by a narrow peninsula 
running in a north-westerly direction. Its outlines are very similar 
