The name “Maori” is said to mean “native,” but the boast on the part of the Maori race contained in the title “Natives of the Soil” is one which conflicts with their traditions. These make them out to be mere interlopers—Tahitians, they themselves say— who, within historic ages, sailed down island by island in their war-canoes, massacring the inhabitants, and, finally landing in New Zealand, found a numerous horde of blacks of the Australian race living in the forests of the South Island. Favoured by a year of exceptional drought, they set fire to the forests, and burnt to the last man, or drove into the sea, the aboriginal possessors of the soil. Some ethnologists believe that this account is in the main correct, but hold that the Maori race is Malay, and not originally Tahitian: others have tried to show that the conflict between blacks and browns was not confined to these two islands, but raged throughout the whole of Polynesia; and that it was terminated in New Zealand itself, not by the destruction of the blacks, but by the amalgamation of the opposing races.

The legends allege war as the cause for the flight to New Zealand. The accounts of some of the migrations are circumstantial in the extreme, and describe the first planting of the yams, the astonishment of the people at the new flowers and trees of the islands, and many such details of the landing.

“In front of San Francisco are 745 millions of hungry Asiatics, who have spices to exchange for meat and grain.”

The words are Governor Gilpin's, made use of by him in discussing the future of overland trade, and worthy of notice as showing why it is that, in making forecasts of the future of California, we have to look more to her facilities for trade than to her natural productions. San Francisco aims at being, not so much the port of California as one of the chief stations on the Anglo-Saxon highway round the globe.

Although the chief claim of California to consideration is her position on the Pacific, her fertility and size alone entitle her to notice. This single State is 750 miles in length—would stretch from Chamouni to the southernmost point of Malta. There are two capes in California—one nearly in the latitude of Jerusalem, the other nearly in the latitude of Rome. The State has twice the area of Great Britain; the single valley of the Joaquin and Sacramento, from Tulare Lake to the great snow-peak of Shasta, is as large as the three kingdoms. Every useful mineral, every kind of fertile soil, every variety of helpful climate, are to be found within the State. There are in the Union 45 such states or territories, with an average area equal to that of Britain.

After the parching heat of Australia, a visit to Tasmania, was a grateful change. Steaming along Port Dalrymple and up the Tamar in the soft sunlight of an English afternoon, we were able to look upwards, and enjoy the charming views of wood and river, instead of having to stand with downcast head, as in the blaze of the Victorian sun.

The beauty of the Tamar is of a quiet kind: its scenery like that of the non-Alpine districts of the west coast of New Zealand, but softer and more smiling than is that of even the least rude portions of those islands. To one fresh from the baked Australian plains, there is likeness between any green and humid land and the last unparched country that he may have seen. Still, New Zealand cannot show fresher cheeks nor homes more cosy than those of the Tamar valley. Somersetshire cannot surpass the őrchards of Tasmania, nor Devon match its flowers.

The natural resemblance of Maria Van Diemen's Land (as Tasman called it after his betrothed) to England seems to have struck the early settlers. In sailing up the Tamar, we had on one bank the county of Dorset, with its villages touchingly named after those at home, according to their situations, from its Lulworth Cove, Corfe Castle, and St. Alban's Head, round to Abbotsbury, and, on our right hand, Devon, with its Sid mouth, Exeter, and Torquay.