[1] See _Pronunciation of Maori Names_, in the Appendix. The kauri was first brought into notice by Captain Cook, who, it will be remembered, passed many months in New Zealand altogether, and the greater part of the time in the north. He discovered that kauri was superior to Norway pine, or indeed, to any other wood then known, for spars and topmasts of vessels. Other explorers endorsed his opinion of it, and in 1820 the British Government sent a ship, the _Dromedary_, to New Zealand, for the purpose of obtaining kauri timber. It was then classed high at Lloyd's. Subsequently a demand for kauri timber arose in Sydney and elsewhere. Some trade in it was established with the Maoris; and little communities of English sawyers settled here and there along the coast of New Zealand. This was one among other causes that led to the colonization of the country in 1840. Thus the kauri holds a place in history, having had its share in making this our Brighter Britain. The value of the kauri to New Zealand at large, and to the North in particular, can hardly be overrated. It is an important export, being sent to other parts of the colony, to Australia, the South Sea Islands, and elsewhere. In its own country it is used for every purpose to which timber is applicable. The many other trees of the bush are neglected for the sake of it; while it is more plentiful than any of them. Settlers in other parts of the colony, beyond the limit of the kauri's growth, make use of their native timbers, but lament that the cost of transport prevents them from importing kauri, so much superior is it. Wherever it is necessary to bring timber from a distance, as in comparatively treeless Otago for example, kauri is preferred; though it will have to be brought from further away than totara, miro, or matai, which are cut in southern forests. One may say that the kauri is to Northern New Zealand what the oak has been to England, and even more. There, houses are built of it almost exclusively; it is used in the construction of vessels, for fencing, furniture, and all the more general purposes. And its valuable resin is the kauri gum of commerce; but that I must speak of separately. Not alone is the kauri monarch in the forests of New Zealand, but it must rank among the royallest trees the earth produces. It grows, for the most part, in forests sacred to itself, not mixing with the common herd of trees. In this respect other kinds of pine are similar. Also, each distinct tract of kauri bush, or forest, contains trees of a certain uniformity of age, consequently of size. In the aggregate vast tracts are covered with it. The largest forest of kauri is that between the Hokianga and the Kaipara waters, which, I believe, is to be put down at nearly a thousand square miles in extent, bush of a more varied description intervening here and there among it. After it come the kauri forests of Mongonui, Whangaroa, and Coromandel.