As the colonists had never allowed war to hinder them from forging ahead, so, now that peace was assured, they gave rein to their energy and saw to it that their country marched with equal step abreast of the world's progress. As time went on not even that sufficed, and ever and again the old world would stop, agape, while New Zealand confidently adopted political, social or domestic reforms, at which her grown-up relatives were still looking askance as "new-fangled ideas," "dangerous radicalism," and so forth. New Zealand has never been afraid to experiment, and most of her experiments have proved successful, and in their issue "come to stay," if the phrase may be allowed. One of the earliest products of peace was a large addition to the population, thanks to a policy by which fifty thousand immigrants were introduced into the colony in the two years 1874 and 1875. This policy did not stop there; for the Government, as far as possible, found work for the men whom they introduced, just as they are doing at this day. Take for instance that large area in New Zealand known as "The King Country," where, as we have seen, the "Land League" so long had sway. This, which includes more than a million of acres of forest-covered land, and that high plateau surrounding old Te Heu Heu's "ancestor," the smoking cones of Tongariro, is only now being reduced to conditions which shall render cultivation possible. To this wilderness the Government sends hundreds of newly arrived immigrants, who are set to work upon the railway which is being carried through it. The beauty of this region is almost indescribable; and there, too, a man may taste of the experiences of the pioneers and yet miss their greatest hardships. For, if a settler, he works with the certainty of return for his labour; if otherwise, he is paid good wages and is in any case assured of food, for carts carrying bread and meat continually traverse the bush tracks. He is free from the haunting fear that he will awake at some grey dawn to hear the wild yells of blood-lusting savages, or return to his lonely hut to find his wife and children dead upon his hearth. He has no dread of beasts of prey, unlike his brother immigrant in Africa; and he can push his way through breast-high fern or clinging tangle of undergrowth, undismayed lest his heel be bruised by fang of poisonous snake, the terror of his Australian cousin.