How much more charming would the smiling fields ot this 
beautiful country have appeared to us , could we have beheld it 
studded with European towns and villages! The middle Waikato 
Basin is the home of the most powerful and most numerous Maori- 
tribes, whose king had fixed his residence by the confluence of 
the Waikato and Waipa at Ngaruawahia, and whose metropolis, 
— if we may use the expression, — may be considered Rangi- 
awhia, a large settlement, situated between the Waipa and Waikato 
in the southern part of the basin, which has attained its importance 
especially by its extensive corn-trade and horse-breeding. In future 
decades this blessed region will be the granary of the North Is- 
land, — a real Eden for agriculture and the breeding of cattle, 
to which, in this respect, no other part of New Zealand might 
easily compare. The height of the Taupiri above the level of the 
sea, as resulting from my barometrical measurements, amounts to 
988 feet; it consists of a hard blackish-gray slate-rock, polyhedrally 
fissured. The top of this hill will be one of the principal points 
for a future triangulation of the country. 
March 18. — Sunday. — The Sabbath in New Zealand is 
kept by both Europeans and natives , with still greater puritanic 
severity, than in England. Sunday is Ra tapu, a holy day, on 
which first of all it is not allowed to travel. A violation of the 
Sabbath would be censured with double severity in a gentleman 
on account of the bad example set by it to the natives. I for 
my part complied easily and willingly with this strict Sunday- 
law, since a day of rest in the week is a real matter of neces- 
sity to a pedestrian. Only once was I made to feel the severity 
of the law, when, compelled by a scarcity of provisions, I travel- 
led on a beautiful Sunday morning a few miles farther to a Maori- 
village, where I hoped to supply the deficiency, but, after all, 
was literally compelled to fast there till Monday morning in ex- 
piation of my trespass. This time the day of rest was not only 
pleasant to me , but the truly beautiful manner of keeping the day 
at the Mission station made also an edifying impression upon my 
mind. The missionary school numbered 94 pupils, 46 girls and 
