The recent visit of King Tawhiao to this country has awakened a deep and widespread interest in New Zealand and its inhabitants. The Maori king has been fêted and feasted far beyond his desires, and has paid the penalty of greatness. But he has suffered martyrdom in a good cause; and if he has not succeeded in bringing the wrongs of the Maoris home to the Pakehas, he has certainly aroused a very general curiosity as to the character and resources of the mysterious ‘King Country’ of which he is the titular chieftain. The publication of Mr J. H. Kerry-Nicholls’s volume of travels—entitled _The King Country, or Explorations in New Zealand_ (London: Sampson Low)—in this unknown region is, therefore, peculiarly well timed. Until within the last few years, ‘the King Country’—as a vast tract of the finest land in North Island is still known—was a _terra incognita_ to Europeans. Rivalries of race constituted a barrier more impassable than the _aukati_ line itself, which separates the Maori lands from the European portion of the colony, and is marked on the one side by the farms and homesteads of the settlers, and on the other by the huts of the natives. In its vast forests, over its precipitous mountains, along its trackless plains, the natives alone wandered. It was an _imperium in imperio_, a fastness in which aboriginal sovereignty sat enthroned, deaf to all the offers of civilisation. It was through this unknown country that Mr Kerry-Nicholls pushed his way in company only with an interpreter. With but three horses, which were ultimately reduced to two, he accomplished more than six hundred miles of travel, discovered many new streams, penetrated almost inaccessible regions of mountainous forest, found extensive plains, traced the sources of three of the principal rivers of the colony, examined the unknown shores of its largest lake, ascended one of its highest mountains, experienced degrees of temperature varying from eighty degrees in the shade to twelve degrees below freezing-point, and successfully traversed from south to north a territory with an area of ten thousand square miles, which had been, from the early history of the colony, rigorously closed to Europeans. It is scarcely necessary to add that the records of these wanderings constitute a singularly interesting volume of discovery and adventure, which can hardly fail to prove of some practical utility to the colony, and a welcome contribution to geographical science.