Chap. XIV. NEW PLYMOUTH. 351 
diate maintenance of cattle and sheep. While I was 
staying at Mr. Cooke's house none of his cattle could 
be found for nearly three days, as they had strayed 
many miles in search of pasture. But, of course, arti- 
ficial pasturage will soon remedy this ; and if the fern 
were burnt off, and every one that walked about were to 
carry a few grass-seeds in his pocket, I have no doubt 
but that the grass would eventually choke the fern, as 
it does in other places. 
The population of New Plymouth seemed a particu- 
larly happy set of people. As they are little troubled 
with politics, I rarely saw many of them in the town, 
which is as dull a place, except to look at, as you can 
imagine. But on going to their little farms a mile off 
in one direction or two miles in another, I found them 
hard at work, delighted with the fertility of the soil 
which they were turning over, with hardly a complaint 
to make, and spending homely English evenings round 
a huge farm-house chimney ; rising early, and not long 
out of their beds after their tea and pipes. I could not 
help reflecting, while spending an evening or two in 
this domestic way as a visitor at one of these farm- 
houses, that New Zealand is just the country for people 
like these, the better class of English yeomen. The 
climate is better adapted to an English constitution 
than that of almost any other of our colonies, although 
without a distinct winter, or frost, or fogs, or raw 
easterly winds, to check vegetation or make you house 
your cattle. The amazing productiveness of the soil, 
or rather of the air — for almost all land, if sufficiently 
turned over and exposed for a time, gives abundant 
crops^ — must tend to make agriculture the most plea- 
sant of occupations. And, unless the flax, or the tim- 
ber, or the bark, or mineral productions, are soon disco- 
vered to be valuable exports, it will be difficult to make 
a rapid fortune in the country. 
