24 OCTOBER 1908, Page 19

NEW ZEALAND.*

Mn. W. P. REEVES signalises his retirement from the office of High Commissioner for New Zealand by writing as charming a book as we ever hope to read about the country he has so well represented. The authorship of it, even though it be unofficial, is, we think, one of the most consider. able services he has rendered to New Zealand. It is written with enthusiasm; it does not pretend to be either a guide-book or an exhaustive treatise ; it describes what is in the heart of one who dearly loves his country, and it touches nothing without illuminating it with some learning, humour, or curious observation. Mr. Reeves, in fact, has written the book in his own way, and a very good way it is. The text is more than worthy of the numerous illustrations, which are a true pleasure to the eye, and are by far the best pictures of New Zealand we have ever seen in a book. Mr. Reeves asks whether the image of New Zealand in the mind of the average European is anything like the islands. He concludes that it is not, and no doubt he is right. It is not perhaps common now for Englishmen to think of New Zealand as a kind of annexe of Australia, uniform with Australia in character and not very far distant. That was the prevalent impression when Sir Charles Dilke wrote his Greater Britain about thirty years ago, and the majority of his readers were probably surprised to learn that it took as long to go from Australia to • New Zealand. Painted by F. and W. Wright. Described by Ron. William Pember Reeves, London: A. and C. Black. [20e. net.]

New Zealand as from England to America. And no two countries could be more unlike. Australia is characteristically composed of dry plains and downs, with the low tones of parched brown and the faded green of the wattle; she has a vast beauty of her own when the eye has learned to know and understand it, as the eye of the settler soon does. The Australian could no more leave his country after a few years and return to England, where be would feel as though he were living in a bandbox, than (as legend tells us) the settler can leave South Africa who has once taken to wearing Dutch veld-shoes. But New Zealand has not even to be learned to capture the imagination; the country is as green as Ireland, and as imposing as Switzerland. It gushes with abounding streams and rivers. One of the early stories of "new chums" in New Zealand was of two brothers who ruined themselves because, after some experience in Australia, they bought for a great sum the first land they happened to see in New Zealand. It had much water on it, and they bought it for that sole reason.. But water is very cheap in New Zealand. The saying of the rough and less civilised early days, indeed, was that every New Zealander who did not die of drink died of drowning.

New Zealand belongs to no particular group in the physical world. She stands for herself, and is complete in herself.

Some of the misunderstanding as to her geographical position, Mr. Reeves thinks, is due to Mercator's projection. This is not the first time he has fallen foul of that "conventional sign," as it is called in The Hunting of the Snark, and we

suggest that he should finally expose it in a pamphlet as a first charge upon his energy before he allows himself to be

absorbed entirely by the London School of Economics.

Mr. Reeves insists on the extraordinary changes which have come about in the standard of living in New Zealand within a few years :—

" The lord of 40,000 acres may be a rural settler or a rich man with interests in town as well as country. In either case his house is something far more costly than the old wooden bungalow. It is defended by plantations and approached by a curving carriage drive. When the proprietor arrives at his front door he is as likely to step out of a motor-car as to dismount from horseback. . Within, you may find an airy billiard-room ; without, smooth- shaven tennis lawns, and perhaps a bowling-green. The family and their guests wear evening dress at dinner, whore the wine will be expensive, and may even be good. In the smoking-room, cigars have displaced the briar-root pipes of our fathers. The stables are higher and more spacious than were the dwellings of the men of the early days. Neat grooms and trained gardeners are seen in the place of the rouse-abouts ' of yore. Dip and wool-shed are discreetly hidden from view ; and a conservatory rises where meat once hung on the gallows."

One thing which we are specially glad to hear on such good authority as Mr. Reeves's is that the Maori are not dying out as was supposed not long ago. Till the end of the nine- teenth century, at least, it was never doubted that their numbers were dwindling, not only constantly, but rapidly.

We must conclude now either that the Maori have regained their vitality, or that the estimates of the population were too low. Or perhaps both explanations are true ; the taking of the Census meets with less opposition, and the effect of the first shock between civilisation and primitive customs has passed away.

We cannot do more than mention the chapter on sport and athletics, for we must come to what seems to us to be more in Mr. Reeves's heart than any other matter,—the destruction of the forests:—

" And then there is the great area deliberately cut and burned to make way for grass.. Here the defender of tree-life is faced with a more difficult problem. The men who are doing the melancholy work of destruction are doing also the work of colonisation. As a class they are, perhaps, the most interesting and deserving in colonial life. They are acting lawfully and in good faith. Yet the result is a hewing down and sweeping away of beauty, compared with which the conquests of the Goths and Vandals were conservative processes. For those noted invaders did not level Rome or Carthage to the ground: they left classic architecture standing. To the lover of beautiful Nature the work of our race in New Zealand seems more akin to that of the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor, when they swept away population, buildings and agriculture, and Byzantine city and rural life together, in order to turn whole provinces into pasture for their sheep. Not that my countrymen are more blind to beauty than other colonists from Europe. It is mere accident which has laid upon them the burden of having ruined more natural beauty in the last half- century than have other pioneers. The result is none the less saddening To-day we are told that the timber still standing cannot last our saw-mills more than two generations, and that a supply which was estimated at forty-three thousand million feet in 1905 had shrunk to thirty-six thousand million feet in 1907. The acreage of our forests must be nearer fifteen than twenty millions now. Some of this, covering, as it does, good alluvial soil, must go ; but I am far from being alone in believing that four-fifths of it should be conserved, and that where timber is cut the same precautions should be insisted on as in Germany, France, India, and some intelligent portions of North America."

Forestry is a province in which all nations fail in foresight. It requires one to look so far ahead that to a young people it

hardly seems worth while, and to an old one the devastation often seems too hopeless to be retrieved. We hope Mr. Reeves's words will do something, however, to make the New Zealanders stop and think. As we write some lines come to

our mind which Mr. Reeves published a few years ago. Then, as now, he mourned the forests :— "The axe bites deep ; the rushing fire streams bright—

Clear, beautiful and fierce it speeds for man, The master, set to change and stern to smite, Bronzed pioneer of nations. Ay, but scan The ruined beauty wasted in a night, The blackened wonder God alone could plan, And builds not twice ! A bitter price to pay Is this for Progress—beauty swept away."

Mr. Reeves gives a capital account of the hot-lake district, and he writes of the Maori legends in a way which shows that the spirit of Sir George Grey is yet alive. Writing of the religious prophets who from time to time rise among the Maori, he tells the following story :—

" A certain Rua, who just now commands belief among his countrymen, has managed to induce a following to found a well- built village on a hill-side among the forests of the Uriwera country. There, attended by several wives, be inhabits a comfortable house. Hard by rises a large circular temple, a wonderful effort of his native workmen. He has power enough to prohibit tobacco and alcohol in his settlement, to enforce sanitary rules, and to make his disciples clear and cultivate a large farm. Except that he forbids children from going to school, he does not appear to set himself against the Government. He poses, I understand, as a successor of Christ, and is supposed to be able to walk on the surface of water. His followers were anxious for ocular proof of this, and a hint of their desire was conveyed to the prophet. He assembled them on a river's bank and gravely inquired, 'Do you all from your hearts believe that I can walk on that water?' 'We do,' was the response. Then it is not necessary for me to do it,' said he, and walked com- posedly back to his hut."

It may seem captious to complain of very small blemishes ; but the book is written with such careful art that they are rela- tively more disfiguring than in most books. Mr. Reeves attri- butes to "a certain undergraduate" "Lewis Carroll's " famous summing up of the Homeric controversy, and applies it, not to Homer, but to the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy. "It seems that the work was written by another gentleman of the same name" loses both in wit and point when transferred from the one controversy to the other. Next, the phrase embarras des richesses is not French. The des of course should be de. Again, the dramatic account of the eruption of Tara- wera does not give the year when it happened. The dates of previous eruptions are given, and when the author comes to the chief disaster of all he gives the day of the month, and even the time of day, and yet with all this particularity the year is left out. Finally, the word "fuchsia" is misspelt throughout. He is a happy author, however, who has no worse mistakes than these to correct. The present writer might add that he used to find it less easy than Mr. Reeves apparently did to keep his bat on at Wellington, where the wind rushes through the funnel of Cook's Strait. But this is a matter of opinion— or a matter of comparative experience, which is almost the same thing—and it is natural for Mr. Reeves to defend his capital. We respect his motive, but retain our belief in the hat-removing power of the wind. One question in conclusion. Why is Hawkes Bay, as every one without exception in New Zealand calls it, frequently called "Hawke Bay" in maps ? It is so called in the map in this book, yet probably Mr. Reeves never spoke of Hawke Bay in his life. That form of the name was vanquished by usage long ago. Will not he remedy this even before he undertakes the abolition of Mercator'a projection ?

We unreservedly commend this hook. It is romantic

because Mr. Reeves is a poet, yet it nowhere exaggerates. New Zealanders will behold here the lineaments of their

land glorified yet truthful; those who have never seen New Zealand will not die happy unless they do so after reading this book. They may not thank Mr. Reeves for this, but that is not our affair.