Transcriber’s Notes
Page 53—wid-winter changed to mid-winter.
Page 151—sullenly changed to suddenly.
The spelling of Lake Te-Anau has been retained with a hyphen
and the township of Te Anau without a hyphen.
Other changes made are noted at the end of the book.
NEW ZEALAND
AGENTS
AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
AUSTRALASIA THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
ST. MARTIN’S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO
INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
[Illustration: ON M’KINNON’S PASS]
NEW ZEALAND
PAINTED BY
F. AND W. WRIGHT
DESCRIBED BY
HON. WILLIAM PEMBER REEVES
HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR NEW ZEALAND
_Ultima regna canam fluido contermina mundo_
[Illustration]
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1908
Contents
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE ISLANDS AND THEIR CITIES 1
CHAPTER II
COUNTRY LIFE 28
CHAPTER III
SPORT AND ATHLETICS 52
CHAPTER IV
IN THE FOREST 76
CHAPTER V
FIRE AND WATER 115
CHAPTER VI
ALP, FIORD, AND SANCTUARY 160
CHAPTER VII
OUTLYING ISLANDS 204
APPENDIX
A WORD TO THE TOURIST 230
List of Illustrations
1. On M’Kinnon’s Pass _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. “Paradise,” Lake Wakatipu 2
3. Te-Wenga 4
4. Diamond Lake 6
5. On the Bealey River 8
6. Wellington 18
7. Dunedin 20
8. Napier 24
9. The Bathing Pool 26
10. Nelson 28
11. On the Beach at Ngunguru 30
12. At the Foot of Lake Te-Anau 32
13. The Waikato at Ngaruawahia 34
14. Tree Ferns 38
15. A Maori Village 42
16. A Pataka 44
17. Coromandel 50
18. Cathedral Peaks 56
19. The Rees Valley and Richardson Range 58
20. At the Head of Lake Wakatipu 66
21. North Fiord, Lake Te-Anau 68
22. Christchurch 72
23. Canoe Hurdle Race 74
24. Waihi Bay, Whangaroa Harbour 74
25. The Return of the War Canoe 76
26. Okahumoko Bay, Whangaroa 78
27. Maori Fishing Party 80
28. Carved House, Ohinemutu 82
29. A Bush Road 84
30. Among the Kauri 88
31. Pohutu-kawa in Bloom, Whangaroa Harbour 90
32. Nikau Palms 94
33. On the Pelorus River 98
34. Auckland 100
35. Mount Egmont 104
36. Tarei-po-Kiore 106
37. Morning on the Wanganui River 108
38. On the Upper Wanganui 110
39. Wairua Falls 112
40. “The Dragon’s Mouth” 120
41. Huka Falls 122
42. Ara-tia-tia Rapids 124
43. Lake Taupo 130
44. In a Hot Pool 134
45. Ngongotaha Mountain 136
46. Lake and Mount Tarawera 144
47. Maori Washing-day, Ohinemutu 146
48. Wairoa Geyser 150
49. Cooking in a Hot Spring 152
50. The Champagne Cauldron 154
51. Evening on Lake Roto-rua 156
52. Planting Potatoes 158
53. The Wairau Gorge 160
54. In the Hooker Valley 162
55. Mount Cook 164
56. Mount Sefton 172
57. The Tasman Glacier 174
58. The Cecil and Walter Peaks 176
59. Manapouri 178
60. Mitre Peak 180
61. In Milford Sound 182
62. On the Clinton River 184
63. At the Head of Lake Te-Anau 186
64. The Buller River near Hawk’s Craig 192
65. Below the Junction of the Buller and Inangahua Rivers 194
66. Bream Head, Whangarei Heads 196
67. Lawyer’s Head 198
68. A Maori Chieftainess 200
69. Weaving the Kaitaka 212
70. “Te Hongi” 216
71. Wahine’s Canoe Race on the Waikato 218
72. Native Gathering 220
73. White Cliffs, Buller River 230
74. The Otira Gorge 232
75. Lake Waikare-Moana 234
_Map at end of Volume._ 242
CHAPTER I
THE ISLANDS AND THEIR CITIES
The poet who wrote the hexameter quoted on the title-page meant it to
be the first line of a Latin epic. The epic was not written--in Latin
at any rate,--and the poet’s change of purpose had consequences of
moment to literature. But I have always been glad that the line quoted
was rescued from the fire, for it fits our islands very well. They
are, indeed, on the bounds of the watery world. Beyond their southern
outposts the seaman meets nothing till he sees the iceblink of the
Antarctic.
From the day of its annexation, so disliked by Downing Street, to
the passing of those experimental laws so frowned upon by orthodox
economists, our colony has contrived to attract interest and cause
controversy. A great deal has been written about New Zealand; indeed,
the books and pamphlets upon it form a respectable little library. Yet
is the picture which the average European reader forms in his mind
anything like the islands? I doubt it. The patriotic but misleading
name, “The Britain of the South,” is responsible for impressions
that are scarcely correct, while the map of the world on Mercator’s
Projection is another offender. New Zealand is not very like Great
Britain, though spots can be found there--mainly in the province of
Canterbury and in North Otago--where Englishmen or Scotsmen might
almost think themselves at home. But even this likeness, pleasant as
it is at moments, does not often extend beyond the foreground, at any
rate as far as likeness to England is concerned. It is usually an
effect produced by the transplanting of English trees and flowers,
cultivation of English crops and grasses, acclimatisation of English
birds and beasts, and the copying more or less closely of the English
houses and dress of to-day. It is a likeness that is the work of the
colonists themselves. They have made it, and are very proud of it. The
resemblance to Scotland is not quite the same thing. It sometimes does
extend to the natural features of the country. In the eastern half of
the South Island particularly, there are landscapes where the Scot’s
memory, one fancies, must often be carried back to the Selkirks, the
peaks of Arran, or the Highland lochs of his native land. Always,
however, it is Scotland under a different sky. The New Zealanders live,
on the average, twelve degrees nearer the equator than do dwellers in
the old country, and though the chill of the Southern Ocean makes the
change of climate less than the difference of latitude would lead one
to expect, it is still considerable. The skies are bluer and higher,
the air clearer, and the sun much hotter than in the British
Isles. The heavens are a spacious dome alive with light and wind. Ample
as the rainfall is, and it is ample almost everywhere, the islands,
except in the south-west, strike the traveller as a sunny as well as a
bracing country. This is due to the ocean breezes and the strength of
the sunshine. The average number of wet days in the year is 151; but
even a wet day is seldom without sunshine, it may be for some hours, it
will be at least a few gleams. Such a thing as a dry day without a ray
of brilliance is virtually unknown over four-fifths of the colony. I
once had the felicity of living in London during twenty-two successive
days in which there was neither a drop of rain nor an hour of sunshine.
If such a period were to afflict New Zealand, the inhabitants would
assuredly imagine that Doomsday was at hand. “Truly the light is sweet,
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun,” is a text
which might be adopted as a motto for the islands.
[Illustration: “PARADISE,” LAKE WAKATIPU]
In the matter of climate the islanders are certainly the spoilt
children of Nature; and this is not because the wind does not blow
or the rain fall in their country, but because of what Bishop Selwyn
called “the elastic air and perpetual motion” which breed cheerfulness
and energy all the year round. Of all European climates it resembles
most closely, perhaps, that of the coasts of France and Spain fronting
on the Bay of Biscay. Round New Zealand are the same blue, sparkling,
and uneasy seas, and the same westerly winds, often wet and sometimes
rising into strong gales. And where France and Spain join you may see
in the Pyrenees very much such a barrier of unbroken mountains as the
far-reaching, snowy chains that form the backbone of the islands of the
south. Further, though mountainous, ours is an oceanic country, and
this prevents the climate from being marked by great extremes. It is
temperate in the most exact sense of the word. The difference between
the mean of the hottest month and the mean of the coldest month is not
more than fifteen degrees in most of the settlements. Christchurch is
an exception, and even in Christchurch it is only twenty degrees. In
Wellington the mean for the whole year is almost precisely the same
as in St. Louis in the United States. But the annual mean is often a
deceitful guide. St. Louis is sixteen degrees warmer in summer and
seventeen degrees colder in winter than Wellington; and that makes all
the difference when comfort is concerned. Wellington is slightly cooler
than London in midsummer, and considerably warmer in winter. Finally,
in the matter of wind, the European must not let himself be misled by
the playful exaggerations in certain current New Zealand stories. It
is not the case that the experienced citizen of Wellington clutches
convulsively at his hat whenever he turns a street-corner in any city
of the world; nor is it true that the teeth of sheep in the Canterbury
mountain valleys are worn down in their efforts to hold on to the long
tussock grass, so as to save themselves from being blown away by
the north-west gales. Taken as a whole, our land is neither more nor
less windy than the coasts of the English Channel between Dover and the
Isle of Wight. I write with the advantage of having had many years’
experience of both climates.
[Illustration: TE-WENGA]
On the map of the world New Zealand has the look of a slim insular
strip, a Lilliputian satellite of the broad continent of Australia.
It is, however, twelve hundred miles from the continent, and there
are no island stations between to act as links; the Tasman Sea is an
unbroken and often stormy stretch of water. Indeed, New Zealand is as
close to Polynesia as to Australia, for the gap between Cape Maria Van
Diemen and Niue or Savage Island is also about twelve hundred miles
across. In result, then, the colony cannot be termed a member of any
group or division, political or scientific. It is a lonely oceanic
archipelago, remote from the great centres of the earth, but with a
character, attractions, and a busy life of its own. Though so small on
the map, it does not strike those who see it as a little country. Its
scenery is marked by height and steepness; its mountain ranges and bold
sea-cliffs impress the new-comer by size and wildness. The clear air,
too, enables the eye to travel far; and where the gazer can hold many
miles of country in view--country stretching away, as a rule, to lofty
backgrounds--the adjective “small” does not easily occur to the mind.
Countries like Holland and Belgium seem as small as they are; that is
because they are flat, and thickly sown with cities and villages. In
them man is everything, and Nature appears tamed and subservient. But
New Zealand submits to man slowly, sometimes not at all. There the
rapid rivers, long deep lakes, steep hill-sides, and mountain-chains
rising near to or above the snow-line are features of a scenery varying
from romantic softness to rough grandeur. Indeed the first impression
given by the coast, when seen from the deck of an approaching ship, is
that of the remnant of some huge drowned continent that long ago may
have spread over degrees of longitude where now the Southern Ocean is a
weary waste.
[Illustration: DIAMOND LAKE]
Nor, again, is this impression of largeness created by immense tracts
of level monotony, as in so many continental views. There is none of
the tiresome sameness that besets the railway passenger on the road
from The Hague to Moscow--the succession of flat fields, sandy heaths,
black pine woods, and dead marshes. For the keynote of our scenery is
variety. Few countries in the world yield so rapid a series of sharp
contrasts--contrasts between warm north and cool south; between brisk,
clear east and moist, mild west; between the leafy, genial charm of
the coastal bays and the snows and rocky walls of the dorsal ridges.
The very mountains differ in character. Here are Alps with long white
crests and bony shoulders emerging from forests of beech; there
rise volcanoes, symmetrical cones, streaked with snow, and in some
instances incessantly sending up steam or vapour from their summits.
Most striking of all the differences, perhaps, is the complete change
from the deep and ancient forests which formerly covered half
the islands, to the long stretches of green grass or fern land where,
before the coming of the settlers, you could ride for miles and pass
never a tree. Of course many of these natural features are changing
under the masterful hands of the British colonist. Forests are being
cut down and burned, plains and open valleys ploughed up and sown,
swamps drained, and their picturesque tangle of broad-bladed flax,
giant reeds, and sharp-edged grasses remorselessly cleared away.
Thousands of miles of hedges, chiefly of gorse, now seam the open
country with green or golden lines, and divide the surface into more or
less rectangular fields; and broom and sweetbriar, detested weeds as
they are, brighten many a slope with gold or rose-colour in spring-time.
Plantations of exotic trees grow in number and height yearly, and show
a curious blending of the flora of England, California, and Australia.
Most British trees and bushes thrive exceedingly, though some of them,
as the ash, the spruce, the holly, and the whitethorn, find the summers
too hot and the winters not frosty enough in many localities. More than
in trees, hedgerows, or corn-crops, the handiwork of the colonist is
seen in the ever-widening areas sown with English grasses. Everything
has to give way to grass. The consuming passion of the New Zealand
settler is to make grass grow where it did not grow before, or where
it did grow before, to put better grass in its place. So trees, ferns,
flax, and rushes have to pass away; with them have to go the wiry
native tussock and tall, blanched snow-grass. Already thirteen million
acres are sown with one or other mixture of cock’s-foot, timothy,
clover, rye-grass, fescue--for the New Zealand farmer is knowing in
grasses; and every year scores of thousands of acres are added to the
area thus artificially grassed. Can you wonder? The carrying power of
acres improved in this way is about nine times that of land left in
native pasture; while as for forest and fern land, they, before man
attacked them, could carry next to no cattle or sheep at all. In the
progress of settlement New Zealand is sacrificing much beauty in the
districts once clad in forest. Outside these, however, quite half the
archipelago was already open land when the whites came, and in this
division the work of the settler has been almost entirely improvement.
Forty years ago it needed all the gold of the sunshine and all the
tonic quality of the air to make the wide tracts of stunted bracken
in the north, and even wider expanses of sparse yellowish tussock in
the south, look anything but cheerless, empty, and half-barren. The
pages of many early travellers testify to this and tell of an effect
of depression now quite absent. Further, for fifteen years past the
process of settling the soil has not been confined to breaking in the
wilderness and enlarging the frontiers of cultivated and peopled land.
This good work is indeed going on. But hand in hand with it there
goes on a process of subdivision by which fresh homes rise yearly
in districts already accounted settled; the farmstead chimneys send
up their smoke ever nearer to each other; and the loneliness
and consequent dulness that once half spoiled country life is being
brightened. Very few New Zealanders now need live without neighbours
within an easy ride, if not walk.
[Illustration: ON THE BEALEY RIVER]
Like the province of the Netherlands the name of which it bears, New
Zealand is a green land where water meets the eye everywhere. There
the resemblance ends. The dull grey tones of the atmosphere of old
Zealand, the deep, unchanging green of its pastures, the dead level
and slow current of its shallow and turbid waters, are conspicuously
absent at the Antipodes. When the New Zealander thinks of water his
thoughts go naturally to an ocean, blue and restless, and to rivers
sometimes swollen and clouded, sometimes clear and shrunken, but always
rapid. Even the mountain lakes, though they have their days of peace,
are more often ruffled by breezes or lashed by gales. In a word,
water means water in motion; and among the sounds most familiar to a
New Zealander’s ears are the hoarse brawling of torrents, grinding
and bearing seaward the loose shingle of the mountains, and the deep
roar of the surf of the Pacific, borne miles inland through the long
still nights when the winds have ceased from troubling. It is no mere
accident, then, that rowing and sailing are among the chief pastimes of
the well-watered islands, or that the islanders have become ship-owners
on a considerable scale. Young countries do not always carry much
of their own trade; but, thanks to the energy and astute management
of their Union Steamship Company, New Zealanders not only control
their own coasting trade, but virtually the whole of the traffic
between their own shores, Australia, and the South Sea Islands. The
inter-colonial trade is substantial, amounting to between £5,000,000
and £6,000,000 a year. Much larger, of course, is the trade with the
mother country; for our colony, with some success, does her best to
shoulder a way in at the open but somewhat crowded door of London.
Of her total oversea trade of about £37,000,000 a year, more than
two-thirds is carried on with England and Scotland. Here again the
colonial ship-owner has a share of the carrying business, for the
best known of the four ocean steamship companies in its service is
identified with the Dominion, and bears its name.
With variety of scenery and climate there comes, of course, an equal
variety of products. The colony is eleven hundred miles long, and lies
nearly due north and south. The latitudes, moreover, through which it
extends, namely, those from 34° to 47°, are well suited to diversity.
So you get a range from the oranges and olives of the north to the
oats and rye of colder Southland. Minerals, too, are found of more
than one kind. At first the early settlers seemed none too quick in
appreciating the advantages offered them by so varied a country. They
pinned their faith to wool and wheat only, adding gold, after a time,
to their larger exports. But experience showed that though wool and
wheat yielded large profits, these profits fluctuated, as they still
do. So the growers had to look round and seek for fresh outlets and
industries. Thirty years ago, when their colony was first beginning to
attract some sort of notice in the world’s markets, they still depended
on wool, gold, cereals, hides, and tallow. Cereals they have now
almost ceased to export, though they grow enough for home consumption;
they have found other things that pay better. They produce twice as
much gold as they did then, and grow more wool than ever. Indeed that
important animal, the New Zealand sheep, is still the mainstay of his
country. Last year’s export of wool brought in nearly £7,700,000. But
to the three or four industries enumerated the colonists have added
seven or eight more, each respectable in size and profitable in the
return it yields. To gold their miners have added coal, the output
of which is now two million tons a year. Another mineral--or sort of
mineral--is the fossil resin of the giant Kauri pine, of which the
markets of Europe and North America absorb more than half-a-million
pounds’ worth yearly. Freezing and cold storage have become main allies
of the New Zealand farmer, whose export of frozen mutton and lamb now
approaches in value £4,000,000. Almost as remarkable is the effect of
refrigerating on dairying in the islands. Hundreds of co-operative
butter factories and creameries have been built during the last twenty
years. It is not too much to say that they have transformed the face
of whole provinces. It is possible to grow wool on a large scale with
but the sparsest population, as the interior of Australia shows; but
it is not possible to grow butter or cheese without multiplying homes
and planting families fairly thickly on the land. In New Zealand even
the growing of meat and wool is now chiefly done on moderate-sized
land-holdings. The average size of our flocks is but a thousand head.
But it is dairying that is _par excellence_ the industry of the small
man. It was so from the first, and every decade shows a tendency to
closer subdivision of the land devoted to producing butter and cheese.
Within the last few years, again, yet another industry has seemed to be
on the road to more scientific organisation. This is the manufacture
of hemp from the fibre of the native flax. One cannot call this a new
thing, for the colonists tried it on a fairly large scale more than
thirty years ago; but their enterprise seemed again and again doomed
to disappointment, for New Zealand hemp proved for a long while but
a tricky and uncertain article of commerce. It was and is a kind of
understudy of manilla, holding a place somewhere between that and
sisal. For many years, however, it seemed unable to get a firm footing
in the markets, and when the price of manilla fell was apt to be
neglected altogether. During the last decade, however, the flax millers
have decidedly improved its quality, and a demand for it has sprung up
in countries outside Great Britain. It is said that Americans use it in
lieu of hair, and that the Japanese can imitate silk with it. Certainly
the Germans, Dutch, and French buy it, to spin into binder-twine, or,
may be, to “blend” with other fibres.
To the ordinary stranger from Europe, the most interesting of our
industries are those that bear least likeness to the manufactures
and agriculture of an old country. To him there is a savour of the
strange and new in kauri-gum digging, gold-mining, timber-cutting,
and saw-milling, and even the conversion of bushes of flax into
bales of hemp. But if I were asked to choose two industries before
others to describe with some minuteness, I think I should select
the growing, freezing, and export of meat, and the application of
the factory system to the making and export of butter and cheese.
Though my countrymen have no monopoly of these they have from the
first shown marked activity in organising and exploiting them. In one
chief branch of refrigeration their produce stands first in quality,
if not in quantity. I refer to the supply of mutton and lamb to the
English market. In this they have to compete with the larger flocks
of Australia and the Argentine, as well as, indirectly, with the
huge herds and gigantic trade combinations of the United States. Of
the competitors whose products meet at Smithfield, they are the most
distant, and in their command of capital the least powerful. Moreover,
they are without the advantage--if advantage it be--of cheap labour.
Yet their meat has for many years commanded the best prices paid for
frozen mutton and lamb in London, and the demand, far from being
unequal to the supply, has been chiefly limited by the difficulty of
increasing our flocks fast enough to keep pace with it. In the contest
for English favour, our farmers, though handicapped in the manner
mentioned above, started with three advantages--healthy flocks and
herds, a genial climate, and an educated people. The climate enables
their sheep and cattle to remain out all the year round. Except in the
Southern Alps, they suffer very little loss from weather. The sunny
air helps them to keep disease down, and, as already said, the best
artificial grasses flourish in our islands as they flourish in very few
countries. The standard of education makes labour, albeit highly paid,
skilful and trustworthy. The farm-workers and meat-factory hands are
clean, efficient, and fully alive to the need for sanitary precautions.
The horrors described in Upton Sinclair’s “Jungle” are impossible in
New Zealand for many reasons. Of these, the first is that the men
employed in meat factories would not tolerate their existence.
There are thirty-seven establishments in the colony for meat freezing
and preserving, employing over three thousand hands and paying nearly
£300,000 a year in wages. The value of their output is about £5,000,000
a year, and the bulk of it is exported to the port of London. The
weight of meat sent to the United Kingdom last year was two hundred and
thirty-seven million pounds avoirdupois. Then there are about three
hundred and twenty dairy-butter or cheese factories, without counting
a larger outer circle of skimming stations. To these the dairy-farmers
send their milk, getting it back after skimming. That completes their
share of the work; expert factory hands and managers do the rest. As
for meat-freezing, from beginning to end the industry is scientifically
managed and carefully supervised. At its inception, a quarter of a
century ago, the flocks of the colony were healthy and of good strains
of blood. But they were bred chiefly to grow wool, and mainly showed a
basis of Merino crossed with Lincoln or Leicester. Nowadays the Romney
Marsh blood predominates in the stud flocks, especially in the North
Island. Lincoln, Leicester, Merino, Border Leicester, Shropshire, and
South Down follow in order. For five-and-twenty years our breeders
have brought their skill to bear on crossing, with a view to producing
the best meat for the freezing factory, without ruining the quality
of their wool. They still face the cost and trouble of importing stud
sheep from England, though their own selected animals have brought
them good prices in South America, Australia, and South Africa.
Flocks and herds alike are subjected to regular inspection by the
veterinary officers of the Department of Agriculture; and though the
slaughter-yards and factories of the freezing companies are models of
order, speed, and cleanliness, the Government expert is there too, and
nothing may be sold thence without his certificate, for every carcase
must bear the official mark. From the factory to the steamer, from
one end of the earth to the other, the frozen carcases are vigilantly
watched, and the temperature of the air they are stored in is regulated
with painful care. As much trouble is taken to keep freezing chambers
cold as to keep a king’s palace warm. The shipping companies are as
jealously anxious about the condition of their meat cargoes as they are
for the contentment of their passengers and the safety of their ships.
At the London Docks the meat is once more examined by a New Zealand
official, and finally at Smithfield, as the carcases are delivered
there in the small hours of the morning, they are scanned for the last
time by a veterinary expert from the Antipodes. Moreover, since our
meat goes now to other British ports as well as to London, and since,
too, nearly half of what is discharged in the Thames no longer finds
its way to Smithfield, our inspectors have to follow our meat into
the provinces and report upon the condition in which it reaches such
towns as Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, and Manchester. Furthermore,
they do their best to track it a stage farther and ascertain its fate
at the hands of the unsentimental retail trader. Most New Zealand meat
is now honestly sold as what it is. Some of the best of it, however,
is still palmed off on the consumer as British. On the other hand,
South American mutton is sometimes passed off as New Zealand. The
housewife who buys “Canterbury Lamb” because she likes all things
Kentish is not yet altogether extinct. For all this the clumsily-drawn
English law, which makes conviction so difficult, must be held mainly
responsible. New Zealand butter, too, suffers at the hands of English
manipulators. It is what Tooley Street calls a dry butter--that is to
say, it contains on an average not more than some eleven per cent of
moisture. This renders it a favourite for mixing with milk and for
selling as “milk-blended” butter, a process at which makers in the
colony can only look on wrathfully but helplessly. Otherwise they have
little to complain about, for their butter has for years past brought
them prices almost as high as those of good Danish, while during the
butter famine of the first few months of 1908 as much as 150 shillings
a hundredweight was paid for parcels of it. Before shipment in the
colony, butter and cheese are graded by public inspectors. Every box
bears the Government stamp. In practice the verdict of the grader is
accepted by the English purchasers. Relatively the amount of frozen
beef which we export is not large; but our climate and pastures are too
well suited for beef-growing to make it likely that the discrepancy
will continue. Probably frozen beef will give place to chilled; that
is to say, improvements in the art of chilling will enable our beef to
be carried at a temperature of, let us say, 30° Fahrenheit, instead
of 12°. It will then arrive in England soft and fit for immediate
use: thawing will not be needed, and a higher price will be obtained.
But, however far behind New Zealand may as yet lag in the beef trade,
enough has been done in other branches of refrigeration to show
how scientific, well-organised, and efficient colonial industry is
becoming, and how very far the farmers and graziers of the islands are
from working in the rough and hand-to-mouth fashion that settlers in
new countries are supposed to affect.
[Illustration: WELLINGTON]
The purpose of this sketch, however, is not to dilate upon the growth
of our commerce and industry, remarkable as that is in a country so
isolated and a population only now touching a million. My object,
rather, is to give something of an outline of the archipelago itself,
of the people who live there between the mountains and the sea, and of
the life and society that a new-comer may expect to see. Mainly, then,
the most striking peculiarities of the islands, as a land undergoing
the process of occupation, are the decentralised character of this
occupation, and the large areas, almost unpeopled, that still remain
in a country relatively small in size. New Zealand was originally not
so much a colony as a group of little settlements bound together none
too comfortably. Its nine provinces, with their clashing interests and
intense jealousies, were politically abolished more than thirty years
ago; but some of the local feeling which they stood for and suffered
for still remains, and will remain as long as mountain ranges and
straits of the sea divide New Zealand. Troublesome as its divisions are
to politicians, merchants, ship-owners, councils of defence, and many
other persons and interests, they nevertheless have their advantages.
They breed emulation, competition, civic patriotism; and the local
life, parochial as it looks to observers from larger communities,
is at least far better than the stagnation of provinces drained of
vitality by an enormous metropolis. For in New Zealand you have four
chief towns, large enough to be dignified with the name of cities, as
well as twice as many brisk and aspiring seaports, each the centre and
outlet of a respectable tract of advancing country. All these have
to be thought of when any general scheme for opening up, defending,
or educating the country is in question. Our University, to give one
example, is an examining body, with five affiliated colleges; but
these colleges lie in towns far apart, hundreds of miles from each
other. The ocean steamship companies before mentioned have to carry
merchandise to and from six or eight ports. Singers and actors have to
travel to at least as many towns to find audiences. Wellington, the
capital, is still not the largest of the four chief towns, rapid as its
progress has been during the last generation. Auckland, with 90,000
people, is the largest, as it is the most beautiful; Wellington, with
70,000, holds but the second place.
Decentralised as New Zealand is, large as its rural population is, and
pleasant as its country life can be, still its four chief towns hold
between them more than a quarter of its people, and cannot therefore
be passed over in a sentence. Europeans are apt to be impatient of
colonial towns, seeing in them collections of buildings neither large
enough to be imposing nor old enough to be mellowed into beauty or
quaintness. And it is true that in our four cities you have towns
without architectural or historic interest, and in size only about
equal to Hastings, Oxford, Coventry, and York. Yet these towns,
standing where seventy years ago nothing stood, have other features of
interest beside their newness. Cities are, after all, chiefly important
as places in which civilised men and women can live decently and
comfortably, and do their daily work under conditions which are healthy
and neither degrading nor disagreeable. The first business of a city
is to be useful, and its second to be healthy. Certainly it should not
be hideous; but our cities are not hideous. What if the streets tend
to straight rigidity, while the dwelling-houses are mostly of wood,
and the brick and stone business edifices embody modern commercialism!
The European visitor will note these features; but he will note also
the spirit of cleanliness, order, and convenience everywhere active
among a people as alert and sturdy as they are well fed and comfortably
clad. The unconcealed pride of the colonist in material progress may
sometimes jar a little on the tourist in search of the odd, barbaric,
or picturesque. But the colonist, after all, is building up a civilised
nation. Art, important as it is, cannot be the foundation of a young
state.
[Illustration: DUNEDIN]
In the towns, then, you see bustling streets where electric tramways
run out into roomy suburbs, and where motor-cars have already ceased to
be a novelty. You notice that the towns are even better drained than
paved, and that the water supply everywhere is as good as it ought
to be in so well-watered a country. The visitor can send telegrams
for sixpence and letters for a penny, and finds the State telephone
system as convenient as it is cheap. If the hotels do not display
American magnificence they do not charge American prices, for they
give you comfort and civility for twelve-and-sixpence a day. Theatres
and concert-halls are commodious, if not imposing; and, thanks to
travelling companies and to famous artists passing through on their
way to or from Australia, there is usually a good play to be seen or
good music to be heard. Indeed, if there be an art which New Zealanders
can be said to love, it is music. Their choral societies and
glee clubs are many, and they have at least one choir much above the
average. Nor are they indifferent to the sister art of painting, a
foundation for which is laid in their State schools, where all children
have to learn to draw. Good art schools have been founded in the larger
towns, and in some of the smaller. Societies are buying and collecting
pictures for their galleries. At the International Exhibition held
in Christchurch in 1906-7 the fine display of British art, for which
our people had to thank the English Government, was welcomed with
the enthusiasm it deserved. The picture galleries were thronged from
beginning to end of the Exhibition, and the many thousands of pounds
spent in purchases gave material evidence of the capacity of New
Zealanders to appreciate good art when they have the chance of seeing
it.
The same may be said of literature. To say that they all love books
would be absurd; but of what nation can that be said? What can truly
be affirmed is that all of them read newspapers; that most of them
read books of some sort; and that all their books are not novels.
Booksellers tell you that the demand for cheap editions of well-known
authors is astonishing in so small a population. They try to write
books, too, and do not always fail; and a small anthology--it would
have to be very slender--might be filled with genuine New Zealand
poetry. Domett’s reputation is established. Arthur Adams, Arnold Wall,
and Miss Mackay, when at their best, are poets, and good poets.
Of course, however, it is in the newspapers that we have the plainest
evidence of the average public taste. It is a land of newspapers, town
and country, daily and weekly, small or of substantial size. To say
that the best of these equals the best of the English provincial papers
is not, I fear, true. The islands contain no daily newspaper which a
journalist can honestly call equal to the _Manchester Guardian_ or the
_Birmingham Post_; but many of the papers are good, and some of them
are extraordinarily good for towns the largest of which contains, with
its suburbs, but 90,000 people. No one journal towers above the others.
If I were asked to choose a morning, an evening, and a weekly paper, I
should perhaps name the _Otago Daily Times_, the Wellington _Evening
Post_, and the Christchurch _Weekly Press_; but the _Auckland Weekly
News_ has the best illustrations, and I could understand a good judge
making a different selection. The most characteristic of the papers are
illustrated weekly editions of the chief dailies. These good though
not original products of island journalism are pretty close imitations
of their Victorian prototype, _The Australasian_. The influence of the
Press is considerable, though not perhaps as great as might be looked
for from the numbers and success of the newspapers. Moreover, and this
is really curious, they influence the public less in the politics of
the colony than in several other fields.
In a book on New Zealand published ten years ago, I wrote in my haste
the words, “There is no Colonial literature.” What I meant to express,
and doubtless ought to have said, is that there is no body of writing
by New Zealanders at once substantial and distinguished enough to
be considered a literature. I did not mean to suggest that, amongst
the considerable mass of published matter for which my countrymen
are responsible, there is nothing of good literary quality. It would
not have been true to say this ten years ago, and it would be still
less true to say it now. Amongst the large body of conscientious work
published in the colony itself during the last quarter of a century
there is some very good writing indeed. A certain amount of it deserves
to be better known outside our borders than it is. Putting manner aside
for the moment, and dealing only with matter, it is, I think, true to
say that any thorough student of New Zealand as it is to-day, or has
been since 1880, must for authentic information mainly go to works
published in the colony itself. I have some right to speak, for I have
been reading about New Zealand for forty years, and all my reading
has not been desultory. Slight as is this book, for instance, and
partly based as it is on personal recollection and knowledge gleaned
orally, still I could not have written it without very careful study
of many colonial writings. In scanning my list of later authorities
consulted, I am surprised to find what very few exceptions there are to
the rule that they are printed at the other end of the world. To begin
with, the weekly newspapers of the Dominion are mines of information
to any one who knows how to work them. So are the Blue-books, and
that bible of the student of nature and tradition in our islands,
the _Transactions of the New Zealand Institute_. Then there is the
_Journal of the Polynesian Society_; after which comes a long list of
official publications. First among them rank Kirk’s _Forest Flora_ and
Mr. Percy Smith’s _Eruption of Tarawera_. The best general sketch of
Maori manners, customs, and beliefs, is that of Edward Tregear; far the
best book on Maori art is A. Hamilton’s. Quite lately Mr. M’Nab, the
present Minister of Lands, has made a very valuable contribution to the
early chronicles of South New Zealand, in his _Muri-huku_, for which
generations of students will be grateful. Mr. Carrick’s gossip--also
about our South--and Mr. Ross’s mountaineering articles must not be
passed over. Furthermore, there is an illustrated manual of our plants
by Laing and Blackwell, which is something more than a manual, for it
is full of reading which is enjoyable merely as reading. And there is
a manual of our animal life in which the work of Hutton, Drummond,
and Potts is blended with excellent results. Dr. Cockayne’s botanic
articles, Mr. Shand’s papers on the Chathams, and Mr. Buick’s local
Histories of Marlborough and Manawatu deserve also to be noted. Much of
Mr. James Cowan’s writing for the Government Tourist Department is well
above the average of that class of work.
[Illustration: NAPIER]
Society in the towns is made up of a mingling of what in England would
be called the middle and upper-middle classes. In some circles the
latter preponderate, in others the former. New Zealanders occasionally
boast that in their country class distinctions are unknown;
but though this is true politically--for there are no privileged
classes and no lower orders--the line is drawn in matters social, and
sometimes in odd and amusing ways. The townsfolk inside the line are
financiers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, manufacturers, clergymen,
newspaper owners, the higher officials, and the larger sort of agents
and contractors. Here and there, _rari nantes_, are to be encountered
men who paint or write, or are musicians, or professors, or teachers
of colleges or secondary schools. Most of the older and some of the
younger are British-born, but the differences between them and the
native-born are not very apparent, though shades of difference can be
detected. Money, birth, official position, and ability are passports
there, much as in other countries; though it is only fair to say that
money is not all-powerful, and that ability, if not brilliant, has a
slightly better chance than in older societies. On the surface the
urban middle class in the colony differs but little from people of
the same sort in the larger provincial cities of the mother country.
Indeed the likeness is remarkable, albeit in the colony there is no
aristocracy, no smart set, no Army, Navy, or dominant Church; while
underneath there is no multitude of hungry and hard-driven poor for
the rich to shrink from or regard as dangerous. Yet, except for the
comparative absence of frock-coats and tall silk hats, and for the
somewhat easier and less suspicious manner, the middle class remain a
British middle class still. It is, then, pleasant to think that, if
they retain English prejudices, they have also the traditional virtues
of the English official and man of business.
[Illustration: THE BATHING POOL]
To a social student, however, the most interesting and, on the whole,
most cheering aspect of town life is supplied by the work-people. They
are worth watching as they go to their shops and factories between
eight and nine in the morning, or when, after five in the afternoon,
they pour into the streets with their work done and something of the
day yet left to call their own. The clean, well-ventilated work-rooms
are worth a visit certainly. But it is the men and women, youths and
girls themselves who, to any one acquainted with factory hands in
the Old World, seem the best worth attention. Everywhere you note a
decent average of health, strength, and contentment. The men do not
look stunted or deadened, the women pinched or sallow, the children
weedy or underfed. Most of them seem bright and self-confident, with
colour in their faces and plenty of flesh on their frames, uniting
something of English solidity with a good deal of American alertness.
Seventy thousand hands--the number employed in our factories and
workshops--may seem few enough. But forty years ago they could not
muster seven thousand, and the proportional increase during the last
twelve years has been very rapid. To what extent their healthy and
comfortable condition is due to the much-discussed labour laws of
New Zealand is a moot point which need not be discussed here. What
is certain is that for many years past the artisans and labourers
of the colony have increased in numbers, while earning higher
wages and working shorter hours than formerly. At the same time the
employers as a body have prospered as they never prospered before,
and this prosperity shows as yet no sign of abatement. That what is
called the labour problem has been solved in New Zealand no sensible
man would pretend. But at least the more wasteful and ruinous forms
of industrial conflicts have for many years been few and (with two
exceptions) very brief, a blessing none too common in civilised
communities. As a testimony to the condition of the New Zealand worker
I can hardly do better than quote the opinion of the well-known English
labour leader, Mr. Keir Hardie. Whatever my readers may think of his
opinions--and some of them may not be among his warm admirers--they
will admit that he is precisely the last man in the Empire likely to
give an overflattering picture of the lot of the labourer anywhere.
His business is to voice the grievances of his class, not to conceal
or suppress them. Now, Mr. Hardie, after a tour round the Empire,
deliberately picks out New Zealand as the most desirable country for
a British emigrant workman. The standard of comfort there appears to
him to be higher than elsewhere, and he recognises that the public
conscience is sensitive to the fair claims of labour.