511. New British colony of New Zealand is about fourteen hundred miles southeast of Australia, and is com posed of two large islands and many smaller ones. The two main islands are about as large as New York and Pennsylvania together. As in Australia, the people are much like those of England. They have a very good government and fine schools, and, like the people of Australia, are very highly civilized.
The natives of New Zealand are called Maoris. They came there in canoes several hundred years ago from islands far away to the northward in the Pacific Ocean. They are large, strong, brown-skinned people. They are intelligent and have learned the ways of the white men, and some of them have been members of the New Zealand Parliament.
In the north island of New Zealand there is a wonderful geyser field. Where else have you heard about geysers? New Zealand is nearer the South Pole than is Australia, so that it is colder. It also has more rain than has Australia. The climate is like that of the coast of Washington or British Columbia. The pastures of New Zealand are green and rich. There are large flocks of sheep, and many farmers keep dairy cows. Butter and cheese are sent to England, as is also milk that has been dried to a powder. Dried milk will easily keep for a long time and does not take up much space.
512. of the trade of Aus tralia and New Zealand is with the mother country, to which food and raw materials are sent, and from which comes every kind of manufacture you could name.
Australian wool is the finest in the world, and much of the fine woolen cloth in Amer ican suits and overcoats did its first work on the backs of sheep on the wide plains of Australia. There are direct steamship lines from San Francisco to Australia, several from New York, and many from Eng land.
513. Islands of the Pacific Ocean.—The Pacific Ocean is as large as any other two oceans.. It is as large as all the continents put together.
Look at a globe and at Fig. 39, and see how many times you could put Australia into the Pacific Ocean. Many islands are scattered around in this ocean. We have already read about some of these islands— the Philippines (Sec. 260) and the Dutch East Indies. The map shows that several countries own other islands in the Pacific. At Tahiti and Fiji, steamships sometimes stop to get coal. This ocean was first explored by an English sailor named Cap tain Cook. He made several voyages there about the time that the United States became an independent nation.
Some of these Pacific Islands are round, like a ring, and are called atolls. They are made of coral rock and are only a few feet above the sea level. Though the soil is very thin, coconut trees thrive on them. Others, such as Hawaii and the East Indies, have high mountains with large forests and jungle. New Guinea, north of Australia, is the largest of the Pacific Islands. (To what countries does it belong?) We do not know much about this island, nor about two groups called the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides. It is not very safe to go to some of these islands, because some of the people there have the unpleasant habit of eating strangers. Sometimes they eat their own neighbors. In the fall of 1919, they ate up a French coconut grower. An Aus tralian warship went up there and fired shells into the cannibals' village. American and English missionaries have risked their lives to go to these cannibals to teach them better ways of living. A few of these missionaries have been killed, but most of them have succeeded with their work. Returned missionaries say that in a short time these cannibals when patiently taught become kind people and good neighbors, and instead of eating each other, they go to work in coconut plantations and help to make copra, which trading vessels carry away to Europe.