5 
its black streams of lava, with its strangely formed summit, where 
one small cone seemed to be set in the crater of another larger 
one: the first view of Auckland, I must confess, equalled by no 
means my brillant anticipations of New Zealand. 
Entrance to Auckland Harbour, 
Is that Auckland? — 1 said to myself, the farfamed capital 
of the “ Great Britain of the South sea?” Where is the New Zea- 
land Thames? Where the steaming, seething geysers and boiling 
springs? Where are all the volcanic cones of which I had read, 
the ever-steaming Tongariro; the Ruapahu covered with perpetual 
snow and ice; the Taranaki rearing its lofty head to the very clouds; 
where the New Zealand Alps? The picture my imagination had 
created of New Zealand was quite different to that now presented 
to my view. The stupendous conical mountains in reality seemed 
to me shrunk up into little insignificant conical eruptions from 500 
to 600 feet high. Although I knew full well, that those gigantic vol- 
canoes, and the snow-clad mountains of the South-Island were no 
