As to ourselves, life goes on very peacefully, and very pleasantly. We explore all the lovely bays and the little valleys and headlands, and admire the care with which every natural advantage has been preserved and fresh beauties added. Certainly this is a paradise for acclimatisation; and in a very few years it will be hard to guess what is indigenous and what imported. There are pines and cypresses from every corner of the globe; Australian gums; silver-leaved trees from the Cape; and all manner of fruit-bearing trees, planted for the enjoyment of all alike. And these mingle freely with all forms of hardwood peculiar to New Zealand, notably the stately _kauri_ pine (_Dammara australis_), which is peculiar to the province of Auckland, and very similar to the _ndakua_ pine of Fiji; and neither of them would at the first glance be recognised by the unlearned to be pines at all, their foliage being small oblong leaves, and their cones insignificant; their stem is perfectly upright. There is an indigenous palm here, called the _nikau_, a species of areka; and the green dracæna (_Cordyline australis_) flourishes on all moist soil. The settlers call it the cabbage-tree, though its cluster of long handsome leaves crowning a tall stem is nowise suggestive of that familiar vegetable. The Maoris call it the _ti_ tree—by which name the whites, in common with the Australian blacks, call a scrubby shrub, somewhat resembling juniper or gigantic heather, which to the Maoris is known as _manakau_. Its foliage consists of tiny needles, while its delicate white blossoms resemble myrtle. It grows in dense thickets, and spreads so rapidly as to cause endless trouble to the settler who endeavours to convert the hillsides into such pleasant slopes of English grass as those which here appear so perfectly natural, that I could at first hardly believe them to be the result of patient toil. Just below the headland where I am now sitting, there are tufts of handsome green flags. This is the precious New Zealand flax (_Phormium tenax_). Its handsome stalk of red blossom (fully ten feet high) is a special attraction to the bees; and great are the treasures of wild honey to be dug out of the banks, by wily hunters. The long leaves of this flax are nature’s ready-made cords and straps, so strong is the fibre, and so readily do the leaves split into the narrowest strips. At the base of each leaf there is a coating of strong gum, which, I believe, is the chief difficulty in employing machinery in the manufacture of this flax, so as to render it a profitable article of commerce.