NEW ZEALAND, in the South Pacific Ocean, between Australia and North America, consists of two large and several small islands, lying between lat. and 44. S., and long. and 178i° • E., 800 miles long from north to south, and 120 miles broad, with an area of 99,969 English square miles. It was discovered in 1642 by the Dutch seaman Abel Tasman, four of whose crew were killed and eaten, and on the 6th October 1769 by Captain Cook, a British navigator; who had with him Solander and Joseph Banks as naturalists, and in his second voyage the Forsters.
The Middle island is the largest, and has fewer tribes of aborigines than the north. The South island is very small, and not fit for agriculture or grazing, owing to the severe cold and thick bush. It is but thinly the chief occupation of its inhabitants is turning to account the whales and seals which abound on its coast. Down the middle of the North island runs a high range of mountains, of which Ruarahu, 9000 feet above the sea, is the highest. From the main range some high spurs run down to the sea, but most of the range finishes off in low hills, valleys, and plains, highly in request for agricultural and grazing purposes.
Amongst these bills are several active volcanoes, with many that have become extinct. In the higher ranges are many fresh-water lakes. The hot springs on Lake Taupo are one of the great sights of this colony. From these lakes and this mountain tract spring many streams and rivers, some of which are navigable for some distance inland. The rivers of New Zealand are all subject to sudden rises, from the melting of the snow, or from heavy falls of rain ; the mountains from their abrupt formation rapidly throwing off the surplus waters. In the Middle island the main range of mountains runs chiefly down the west coast., and on that side there is little land suitable for agricultural or grazing purposes; but on the eastern coast this formation gives room for large plains and fertile valleys. Of this range, called the Southern Alps, Mount Cook attains an eleva tion of 13,000 feet, and from it to the sea runs the largest glacier in New Zealand. There are many other glaciers in the region of perpetual snow, but this one is of great extent.
On the cast coast of both islands there are some splendid harbours, especially the Bay of Islands, Auckland, and Akarva. The principal towns, Wellington, Christ Church, Dunedin, and the Bluff, have harbours. Some other towns on both coasts have open roadsteads safe only with off shore winds.
Wellington is now the capital of New Zealand. The great gold-digging towns Auckland and Dunedin have the largest population.
The aborigines are the Maori. In stature they are almost equal to Englishmen, the average height of the men being 5 feet 6+ inches. The females arc less handsome than the men, although the young are invariably pleasing. 87 per cent.
have brown skins, with black, straight, and waving hair ; 10 per cent. have reddish-brown skins, with short frizzly or long straight hair, having a rusty-red tinge in it ; and 3 per cent. have black skins, with dark frizzly hair, which does not, however, spread over the head as in Negroes, but grows in tufts which, if allowed to join, twist round each other and form spiral ringlets. Among some tribes the black and reddish men are more numerous than among others. Chiefs are generally brown-coloured, occasionally reddish, rarely black. Every tribe, however, comprises the three varieties ; all speak the same language.
Tattooing is a Polynesian word signifying a repetition of taps. In the language of the New Zealanders, moko is the general term for the tattooing on the face, and whakairo for that on the body. Dampier in 1691 brought to England the first tattooed South Sea islander, a man who was well known in London as the painted prince, at which place he died of small-pox. New Zealand men tattoo their faces, hips, and thighs ; and the women their lips, chins, eyelids; and occasionally straight lines, the offspring of each woman's fancy, are drawn on their bodies. Every line has a name, and among distant tribes the tattoo marks are alike, although the figures tattooed are not made up of the same number of lines. And among the New Zealanders it is a mark of rank to have the streaks of a fish care fully cut on their bodies.
When first discovered, New Zealand possessed, of inammalia, only dogs and rats. The islands had 15 species of the wingless apteryx birds ; the Dinornis giganteus, now extinct, was about 9f feet high, and the D. elcphantopus; the Palapteryx ingens, 6} feet high. While left to themselves, the Maori became skilful hunters and fishermen, and good agriculturists. They learned to carve, to weave, and to tan. They built up an elaborate mythology. Their cannibalism was associated with a belief that the better qualities of the victim were transferred to his devourer. Captain Elphinstone Erskine heard it asserted that there did not exist in 1845 many New Zealand males of twenty years of age who had not, in their childhood, tasted of human flesh. The race is fast disappearing. In 1840 their number was 100,000; in 1856, 65,000; in 1874, 45,000; and in 1892, only 40,000 in North Island, and 200 in South Island. The Maoris themselves scent their approaching fate : As the white man's rat has extirpated our rat, as the European fly is driving out our fly, as the foreign clover is killing our ferns, so the Maori himself will dis appear before the 'white man.' Everywhere, from the Australian aborigines to the New Zealand Maori, the. native races are depicted as fading away before the white man, like the native rat and even the native grasses. Its prin cipal timber trees are species of dacrydium, metro sideros, and podocarpus.