BOOKS.

THE KING COUNTRY OF NEW ZEALAND.*

"Tars is the greatest word of all—love ! love! " So said the Maori King, Tawhiao, a few days ago at the Mansion House-, when bidding farewell to England in the person of the Lord Mayor. We are, indeed, told that if he had "love " in his heart, he had also " a somewhat sullen expression " when he was last

seen on the deck of the 'Potosi,' which is conveying him to Sydney. There is ground, too, for believing that he and the chiefs who- accompanied him to this country were much disappointed at not having had an audience of the Queen during the consider- able period which elapsed between June 4th, when they arrived, and the day of their departure, and that the cautious language used to them by Lord Derby has had the effect of a cold douche on their hopes and ambitions. But there is equally good ground for believing that they have been very favourably im- pressed by the kindness shown theni by individual and non- official Englishmen. It is not at all likely, therefore, that King Tawhiao will in future offer such resistance to would-be explorers of his country, as in October, 1882, he did at his settlement of Whatiwhatihoe to Mr. Kerry-Nicholls, the author of the volume now before us. Mr. Kerry-Nicholls came

to the King armed with an introduction from Sir George Grey, and was invited freely enough to partake of his hospitality,—a courtesy he has returned by acting as cicerone to Tawhiao and his companions in London. But when solicited for the• King's malia, or authority to travel through the Maori country, Tawhiao demurred, chiefly because a meeting of Maori chiefs was being held at Whatiwhatihoe to consider their disputes with the Europeans :- " When the King had learned the object of my mission, and that I had' come to obtain his authority to explore the Maori territory, he was• careful to inquire what other countries I had visited, and whether I. had before travelled in other parts of the world with no other view than to see mountains, rivers, and plains. The Maori,' he remarked, never undergoes fatigue for such a purpose as that ; but I know,' he continued, with a slight touch of naiveté, 'the pakeha is different to the Maori ; he has the " earth hunger," and likes to see new places. If you wish to go into the country, you may do an when the meeting is over ; but it is not good that you should' go until the Maori has spoken with the pakeha at the korero ; therefore, I say, wait, taihoa: The latter word sounded some- what unpleasant to my ears, as I knew with the Maories it was, their gospel, and was synonymous with the Spanish proverb, Never do to-day what may be done to-morrow.' I took the King at his word, but before I left his presence I mentally recorded a vow that if I could not get into the King Country at the north, I would get into it at the south, which I eventually did a few months after- wards."

When Mr. Nicholls actually visited the King Country, he did.

so at his own risk. The native chiefs whom he came across, including Te_Kooti, the Maori Rob Roy—with a wife, by the

way, who is a very good counterpart to Helen Macgregor— were very kind to him. But under the circumstances of the time, such treatment must be considered rather a happy acci- dent than anything else. If Tawhiao's visit to this country

does nothing else, it may at least be expected to render the King Country more open than it has hitherto been, if not to

the settler or the " land-grabber," at least to the explorer and. the naturalist. Mr. Nicholls's book will unquestionably whet the appetite of both.

• The King Country ; or, Frplorations in Nei Zealand. By J. H. Kerry-Nicholls. With numerous Illustrations and a Map. London: Sampson. Low, Marston, Searle, and Itivington. 1884.

Mr. Kerry-Nicholls writes in the grand style of travellers of the old school. He is buoyant, self-confident, graphic to the verge of gush and gorgeousness. He is full of enthusiasm, lavish in ejaculations, perpetually taking off his hat in the pre- sence of Nature with a reverence which, however, if overflow- ing, is perfectly genuine. His sentences spread out like his own tablelands, and flow like his own rivers. He is, perhaps, a little too self-conscious. He tells ns once too often what a wonderful traveller he has been :—

" I had seen the Himalayas and the Alps, the Blue Mountains of Tartary, the Rocky Mountains, and the Sierra Nevadas,—all these were ponderously grand and awe-inspiring. I had sailed over the principal lakes of Europe and America, floated down the Nile, the Ganges, the Yangtze Kiang, the Missouri, and the Mississippi, through the thousand isles of the St. Lawrence, and up and down innumerable other rivers all fair and beautiful. I had beheld the giant marvels of the Yosemite, and stood by the thrilling waters of Niagara ; but for deli- cate, unique beauty, for chaste design, and sublime detail of con- striction, never had I gazed upon so wonderful a sight as Te Tarata. It seemed as if Nature had created the wonders of the lakes and mountains of this fair region with all the marvels of fire and water after the most enchanting design of earthly beauty, and had then gone into the realms of fable and romance, and thrown in a piece of fairyland to complete the picture."

This beats even an American globe-trotter. What a pity it is, however, that explorers who, like Mr. Nicholls, cannot help "going into fits," could not acquire a little of the spirit of the best of all Burns's numerous connoisseurs in love P-

" Tho' this was fair, and that was brew, And you the toast of a' the town, I sigh'd, and said, among them a', Ye are na Mary Morison.' "

A lightness of touch like this is what all travellers should aim at.

Mr. Nicholls's book contains, besides a historical and non- partisan account of the political state of Maoriland, especially since the Treaty of 1840, three achievements. The first is his visit to King Tawhiao, at the tribal gathering held at Whati- whatihoe in October, 1882. The second is his visit to " the lake country," in March, 1883, when he proceeded from Tauranga, on the East Coast (easily approachable from Auckland) to Wairekei, through "the Wonderland of New Zealand." The third consists of his explorations in the King Country, by which name is popularly known that portion of the North Island of New Zealand which extends from lat. 38° to 39° 20' S., and from long. 174° 20' to 176° E., and which is in area about 10,000 square miles. Mr. Nicholls thus sums up his chief work accurately enough.

" With an interpreter and with but three horses—ultimately reduced to two—and with what scant provisions we could carry, I accomplished considerably over six hundred miles of travel, dis- covered many new rivers and streams, penetrated almost inaccessible regions of mountainous forests, found extensive areas of open plains suitable for European settlements, traced the sources of three of the principal rivers of the Colony, examined the unknown shores of its greatest lakes, ascended one of the highest mountains of the southern hemisphere, experienced degrees of temperature varying from 80° in the shade to 12° below freezing-point, and successfully traversed from south to north, through its entire length, a territory with an area of. 10,000 square miles, and which had been from the early history of the Colony rigorously closed to the Europeans by the hostility of the native tribes."

Reproductions of photographs, maps, and other illustrations give light, though not always sweetness, to Mr. Kerry-Nicholls's letterpress. Making an allowance for the self-consciousness to which we have already alluded, and which savours rather of ordinary complacence than of offensive egotism, his book is very highly and heartily to be commended.

Mr. Nicholls rather confirms, than throws fresh light upon, the knowledge we possessed before the appearance of his book, of the manners and customs, the past position and present decline of the Maories. The " wrongs "of King Tawhiao and his chiefs have been placed by themselves much more fully before the British

public than they were before Mr. Nicholls, when he met them in conference in 1882. He says, as all travellers have said be-

fore him, that the original Maories are the finest and most intelli- gent" aborigines " Anglo-Saxon civilisation has ever come in con- tact with. He met some " noble savages" who were positive giants. He describes Wahanui, one of Tawhiao's chiefs, in language which is almost calculated to make one predict that he will prove a Maori Bismarck one of these days. But the new generation of Maories is mentally and physically inferior to the old. Rum and scrofula, tobacco and phthisis, are making havoc among them, though we may surely venture to hope that the education which is spreading among them, and the benigner influences of civilisation

which may yet be introduced into the King Country, will be able to stay this destruction, as, under similar circumstances, they now promise to stay it among the Red Indians. As things are, however, the native population of New Zealand has fallen from 100,000 in Cook's time to 44,099 in 1881. Mr. Nicholls, although he cannot throw mach light on the origin of the peculiar Maori religion, or mixture of superstition and Biblical truth known as- Han-hanism, shows how it is in some quarters degenerating into Materialism. " We believe in nothing here," exclaimed the wife of one of the chiefs who entertained Mr. Nicholls on his travels, "and get fat on pork and potatoes."

The bulk of Mr. Nicholls's work is descriptive, being in fact a panorama of the lake country and of the unexplored King Country of New Zealand which he visited in succession. The former, whose celebrated terraces, Te Otukapurangi and Te Tarata, have already been mentioned as waking ecstatic admira- tion from Mr. Nicholls, should be known as " The Geyserland," quite as much as "The Wonderland." Mr. Nicholls's description being of the panoramic kind, it is difficult to detach one of his pictures from the series to which it belongs. The followings however, may give an idea of Geyserland in New Zealand :-- " The Geyser Valley of Wairakei is one of the most marvellous creations of its kind to be found perhaps in any part of the world. It forms, as it were, one of the principal arteries of thermal action which would seem to extend from the volcano of Tongariro in the south through the Lake region to Whakari, the active crater in the Bay of Plenty, in the east. The bottom of the valley is situated at an elevation of 1,000 feet above the level of the sea, while down its centre, which has a gradual fall to the east, a warm stream of water, known as Te Wairakei, flows rapidly on its course to join the Waikato. Its steep, winding sides rise in some places to a height of over 200 feet, and above these again flat terraces spread out, bounded by clusters of conical, fern-clad hills, which mount upward, as it were, in increasing elevation to the heights beyond. Looking down the valley from one of the elevations, one sees the winding course of the great fissure filled with a dense growth of vegetation, forced into. vigorous life, as it were, by the white clouds of steam that mount into the air on every side. There is one great charm about the Geyser Valley of Wairakei, and that is that it is not a melancholy, dismal- looking place. It has not the Hades-like appearance of Tikitere nor the Valley-of-Death-like look of Whakarewarewa. One is at once struck with the varied growth of vegetation which everywhere abounds, the luxuriance of the trees, the rich beauty of the ferns, and the vivid green of the thick carpet of rare and beautiful mosses which spreads itself everywhere about, from the margin of the stream below to the very tops of the steep, smoking cliffs. Every geyser, spring, and mud-hole has its clustering vegetation, and as you grope your way through the thick undergrowth along the tortuous stream, each thermal wonder bursts suddenly npon the view with a fresh and startling beauty. As we descended into the valley by a tortuous pathway, we heard the rushing of waters below, as the turbulent stream beneath swept onward over a series of miniature cascades ; then the noise of hissing steam burst upon the ear, the heated ground seemed to quake beneath our feet, the boiling mud- holes sent forth a noise like the incessant ' thud ' of a steam-hammer, which mingled in a weird way with the loud roar and splashing of the geysers as they threw up their columns of boiling water above the trees. Gazing anywhere, up and down the valley, some of the most beautiful and curious eights presented themselves. The warm stream which gathered its waters from the overflowing geysers and springs wound its course amidst the trees, sparkling and glittering beneath the sun. In some places" its sides were entirely fringed with ailicious deposits, some white and beautiful like overhanging folds of lace, some dipping down into the water in the form of enormous stalactites, while others, assuming a rounded buttress-like formation, were green with ferns and dank mosses of varied hue. At another moment a rocky point came into view, and above the clustering ferns, brilliant in the soft rays of light, the tall manuka trees, which here attained to wonderful proportions, cast their gnarled branches in a dense canopy overhead, and from the very water's edge, where the warm springs bubbled and hissed, to the very summit of the valley on either side, the heated soil gave life to countless wonders of tho vegetable world."

The latter portion of Mr. Nicholls's narrative is devoted to an account of his exploration of the region surrounding the great Lake Taupo, in the North Island of New Zealand, and his ascent of the volcanic mountains of Ruapehu and Tongariro, which are, respectively, 9,200 and 7,000 feet in height. The ascent by Mr. Nicholls and his interpreter, Mr. Turner, of the until now little-known mountain of Ruapehu, and especially of its ice-bound peak, was really a very plucky feat. But they had their reward in the prospect from the top :-

" Once upon the summit of the rocky crown, a glorious sight burst upon the view—one unique in itself, and unequalled in sublimity. It was now one o'clock, and since the time we had left the base of the mountain on the preiious morning it had taken us nearly twenty hours of actual climbing to reach this spot ; and now we seemed to have entered a new world—a world where there was no sound but the sigh of the wind, where there was no sign of life ; a world placed high in the sky, made up of golden sunshine, azure blue, and glitter- ing snow and ice, but encircled, as it were; by a broad expanse of green, bordered by the blue waves of the ;distant sea. Looking towards the south, along the summit of the mountain, which stretched away for nearly a mile in length, peak rose above peak in colossal proportions from the dazzling expanse of snow. Each grand and towering mass of rock, tinted by the extinct volcanic fires of a reddish hue, standing out clearly defined against the light-blue sky, each pointed summit shining with ice beneath the bright light with grand and almost magical effect. Immediately beneath where we stood was a steep precipice which fell perpendicularly for hundreds of feet below, and beneath this again was a wide circle of jagged rocks, marking the outline of a gigantic crater, filled to its craggy brim with snow, which was furrowed into chasms of enormous depths, the clean-cut sides of which looked white and beautiful in their winding outline. The furthest southern peak of the mountain stood out in grand relief in the distance, its rounded, cupola-shaped summit, being perfect in outline, as if artificially fashioned to serve for the dome of a Mohammedan mosque. Turning from the wonders of the moun- tain, and looking out over the grand expanse of country which stretched far and wide on every side in all its pristine loveliness until it lost itself, as it were, in the wide expanse of ocean, just visible in the distance to the east and west, a wondrous panorama pre- sented itself. Never had I seen a more varied and enchanting scene. I had beheld a wider expanse of country from the summit of the Rocky Mountains, gorges and precipices more stu- pendous in the valley of the Yosemite, and I had gazed over a land very similar in outline from the summit of Fusiyama in Japan, but never before had I atood upon a glacier-crowned height in the region of perpetual snow with an active volcano, rising thousands of feet, beneath me, nor had I ever hehold so wide an expanse of lake, moun- tain, and rolling plain mingling together, as it were, and forming one grand and glorious picture. This wondrous Elysium, for in its primeval beauty it looked like nothing else, with its colossal, glacier- scored mountain, had not the cold frigidity of the Alpine districts of the South Island, where Nature looks awful in its grandeur ; but here was the mingling, as it were, of the torrid and the frigid zone- s' land where the snow-field and the glacier rose in all their impres- sive sublimity above a romantic-looking country clothed in a semi- tropical vegetation, where the choicest and most varied of trees and plants grew spontaneously in an atmosphere which might rank as the most healthful and invigorating in the world. The sight was, indeed, one calculated to overawe the mind and to impress the imagination with a sense of the omnipotence of the Creator. For a radius from where we stood of over 100 miles the whole country was mapped out and clearly defined beneath us. In the north, towering to the skies, we could discern the familiar forms of Pirongia, Karioi, Maungatau- tari, Te Arohe, Ngongotaha, Hapurangi, and flat-topped llorolioro, with Tarawera, Putauaki, and Tauhara standing farther to the east. The forms of Titiraupenga, Rangitoto, Haurakia, Tapirimoko, and Haurangatahi rose above the forests of the King Country ; the pointed summit of Hikurangi shot upwards from the East Coast, and snow-clad Taranaki stood like a sentinel in the west, while Pihanga and Tongariro rose majestically from the plains below—all grand, isolated peaks, standing alone, and whose united altitudes, together with that of the giant mountain on which we stood, would exceed twice the height of Himalayas above the sea. All the intervening space was covered with mountain, valley, river, plain, and lake, and was so clearly defined, that we could trace all the grand features of the country as if delineated upon a plain. In the centre of all shone the broad waters of Taupe as they stretched away like an inland sea—the winding form of Lake Rotoaira shone like a mirror in the plain below—and the miniature lakes on Ton- gariro looked like big turquoise set in a circle of adamant. Indeed, every feature of this wide expanse of country was both varied and beautiful. The broad, rolling expanse of plain which we had beheld during the night, with its coating of frost, was now radiant in its vivid mantle of green, which was relieved here and there by the winding rivers and rushing streams which burst flora the sides of the great mountain and sped onward to join the Waikato as it wound along the base of the Kaimanawa Mountains, which rose like a series of undulating terraces, clothed with dark forests above which their serrated peaks stood out in bold relief against the sky. Beyond the far-reaching mountains stupendous heights arose in the direction of the south-east, range after range, rolling away as far as the eye could reach to the distant Ruahine Mountains, whose stupendous outline bound the horizon in that direction."