Round the Round World on a Church Mission (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. THERE is a natural inclination to suppose that, because the three islands are included under the single name of New Zealand, they must be all alike. But they are widely different. They might, so far as physical geography is concerned, be called different countries, in the same sense as England is a different country from Spain. The latitude they cover is surprising. Although in size they are rather less than Great Britain and Ireland, yet the extremes are as far apart as Newcastle and Naples. There is, of course, a variety of temperature. Auckland is semi-tropical, while the climate of Dunedin is not unlike the climate of the Isle of Wight. But the climate of New Zealand is everywhere variable. When Mr. Augustus Sala, who visited the colony during our stay, was asked how he liked the climate of New Zealand, he inquired, "Which?" And the Americans say there is no climate, but only samples. Westland is wet, and Canterbury is dry. The rainfall at Hokitika is almost five times as great as it is at Christchurch. Again, the North Island is volcanic, the South Island is alpine. The scenery is quite different. It differs as much as the scenery of Kent from that of the canton of Berne. And the people are different. The North Island is still Maori-land, and contains some forty thousand natives, tattooed and independent. The South Island is as British as Britain, and the thinly scattered fifteen hundred Maoris are ordinary Christian villagers. They have, no doubt, a few little superstitions about sorcery, romantic pets with which they have found it hard to part, but not more, perhaps, than the Derbyshire peasant, who cures his little child of the whoopingcough by passing it three times under a briar that has layered itself, chanting all the time--"Under ...