The purpose of this sketch, however, is not to dilate upon the growth of our commerce and industry, remarkable as that is in a country so isolated and a population only now touching a million. My object, rather, is to give something of an outline of the archipelago itself, of the people who live there between the mountains and the sea, and of the life and society that a new-comer may expect to see. Mainly, then, the most striking peculiarities of the islands, as a land undergoing the process of occupation, are the decentralised character of this occupation, and the large areas, almost unpeopled, that still remain in a country relatively small in size. New Zealand was originally not so much a colony as a group of little settlements bound together none too comfortably. Its nine provinces, with their clashing interests and intense jealousies, were politically abolished more than thirty years ago; but some of the local feeling which they stood for and suffered for still remains, and will remain as long as mountain ranges and straits of the sea divide New Zealand. Troublesome as its divisions are to politicians, merchants, ship-owners, councils of defence, and many other persons and interests, they nevertheless have their advantages. They breed emulation, competition, civic patriotism; and the local life, parochial as it looks to observers from larger communities, is at least far better than the stagnation of provinces drained of vitality by an enormous metropolis. For in New Zealand you have four chief towns, large enough to be dignified with the name of cities, as well as twice as many brisk and aspiring seaports, each the centre and outlet of a respectable tract of advancing country. All these have to be thought of when any general scheme for opening up, defending, or educating the country is in question. Our University, to give one example, is an examining body, with five affiliated colleges; but these colleges lie in towns far apart, hundreds of miles from each other. The ocean steamship companies before mentioned have to carry merchandise to and from six or eight ports. Singers and actors have to travel to at least as many towns to find audiences. Wellington, the capital, is still not the largest of the four chief towns, rapid as its progress has been during the last generation. Auckland, with 90,000 people, is the largest, as it is the most beautiful; Wellington, with 70,000, holds but the second place.