BRIGHTER BRITAIN! OR SETTLER AND MAORI IN _NORTHERN NEW ZEALAND._ BY WILLIAM DELISLE HAY, AUTHOR OF "THREE HUNDRED YEARS HENCE," "THE DOOM OF THE GREAT CITY," ETC. "Queen of the seas, enlarge thyself! Send thou thy swarms abroad! For in the years to come,— Where'er thy progeny, Thy language and thy spirit shall be found,— If— —in that Austral world long sought, The many-isled Pacific,— When islands shall have grown, and cities risen In cocoa-groves embower'd; Where'er thy language lives, By whatsoever name the land be call'd, That land is English still." SOUTHEY. IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOL. II. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1882. _(All rights reserved.)_ PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. CONTENTS OF VOL II. CHAPTER PAGE I. OUR SPECIAL PRODUCTS 1 II. OUR CLASSIC GROUND 29 III. MAORI MANNERS. I. 71 IV. MAORI MANNERS. II. 100 V. MAORI MANNERS. III. 135 VI. OUR NATURALIST'S NOTE-BOOK 184 VII. THE DEMON DOG—A YARN 232 VIII. OUR LUCK 272 APPENDIX 303 BRIGHTER BRITAIN! CHAPTER I. OUR SPECIAL PRODUCTS. Northern New Zealand has two special products, which are peculiar to the country, and found nowhere else. They are kauri timber and kauri-gum. When speaking of Northern New Zealand in these sketches, I do not thereby intend the whole of the North Island, as has been previously explained; I mean that northern part of it which may be more properly designated "The Land of the Kauri." The kauri grows throughout all that part of the old province of Auckland which lies to the north of S. lat. 37° 30' or 38°. It does not grow naturally anywhere south of the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude, nor, I believe, can it be induced to flourish under cultivation south of its natural boundary line. The kauri is indigenous to this comparatively small section of New Zealand. It is one of the _Coniferæ_, or pines, and is named by botanists _Dammara Australis_. The only tree of similar species that affords a timber nearly resembling the kauri, though not of such good quality, is one that is found in Fiji; the _Dammara Vitiensis_. It may be as well to mention that kauri and Maori rhyme together, and are pronounced "kowry" and "mowry."[1]