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the neighbouring continents. Neither the fossil flora and fauna, 
as far as they are now known , nor the geological structure of New 
Zealand intimate such a contiguity; on the contrary, various geo- 
logical facts speak in favour of the opinion that New Zealand, 
situated in the middle of a vast and very deep sea, has been an 
island from time immemorial , remote from all larger continents 
and existing in an isolated position , although perhaps of a form 
somewhat different from its present one. 
Another interesting question is, whether New Zealand, after 
the many volcanic and neptunic struggles of which the soil bears 
unmistakable traces, does now rest fully at peace witli nature? 
Most certain it is that since Cook’s times the forms of the double 
island have suffered no material change. But even since the esta- 
blishment of the first European settlements there, the ever active 
powers within the bowels of the earth have shocked and knocked 
and shaken the land so strongly in various corners of the islands, 
especially on both sides of Cook Strait, on the Wanganui (1843), 
in the vicinity of Wellington , and right opposite to it in the Wairau 
plains, and near Cape Campell (1848 and 1855), that the awe- 
struck settlers naturally asked, whether the ground beneath their 
feet was really safe , and whether they had not ventured by a few 
centuries too soon to entrust themselves to a new-born baby of our 
mother earth? 1 With regard to this, the fearful may well feel at 
case, bearing in mind the consoling fact that long before the first 
European set foot on New Zealand’s shores , the land was the abode 
of numerous and populous tribes , that could boast of a long suc- 
cession of time-honoured ancestry , and that it has been clearly 
proven by observations and facts that the volcanic forces below, 
which are now no longer capable of discharging fiery liquid lava, 
are visibly decreasing and dying out. 
By this, however, we do not mean to imply that the ease 
and quiet of the inhabitants may not be disturbed hereafter by 
many a violent earth-quake, by many a “subterranean storm”, and 
1 An English Author in the “Rambles at the Antipodes” describes New Zealand 
as “a geological baby, an infant fire-born, still pulling in his mother's arms.” 
