enable stores to be brought within fairly easy reach. More probably such necessaries as flour, groceries, tools, and grass seed--anything, in short, from a grindstone to a bag of sugar--have to be brought by pack-horse along a bush-track where road-metal is an unattainable luxury, and which may not unfairly be described as a succession of mud-holes divided by logs. Along such a thoroughfare many a rain-soaked pioneer has guided in days past the mud-plastered pack-horse which has carried the first beginnings of his fortunes. For what sustains the average settler through the early struggles of pioneering in the wilderness is chiefly the example of those who have done the same thing before, have lived as hard a life or harder, and have emerged as substantial farmers and leading settlers, respected throughout their district. Success has crowned the achievement so many thousand times in the past that the back-country settler of to-day, as he fells his bush and toils along his muddy track, may well be sustained by hope and by visions of macadamised coach roads running past well-grassed, well-stocked sheep or dairy farms in days to come. [Illustration: A MAORI VILLAGE] Predominant as the white man is in New Zealand, the brown man is too interesting and important to be forgotten even in a rough and hasty sketch. The Maori do not dwell in towns: they are an element of our country life. They now number no more than a twentieth of our people; but whereas a generation ago they were regarded as a doomed race, whose end, perhaps, was not very far distant, their disappearance is now regarded as by no means certain. I doubt, indeed, whether it is even probable. Until the end of the nineteenth century official returns appeared to show that the race was steadily and indeed rapidly diminishing. More recent and more accurate figures, however, seem to prove either that the Maori have regained vitality, or that past estimates of their numbers were too low. I am inclined to think that the explanation is found in both these reasons. In past decades our Census officers never claimed to be able to reckon the strength of the Maori with absolute accuracy, chiefly because the Natives would give them little or no help in their work. It is not quite so difficult now as formerly to enumerate the members of the tribes. Furthermore, there is reason to hope that the health of the race is improving and that its spirit is reviving. The first shock with our civilisation and our overwhelming strength is over. The Maori, beaten in war with us, were not disgraced: though their defeat disheartened them, it did not lead their conquerors to despise them. Again, though they have been deprived of some of their land, and have sold a great part of the rest, the tribes are still great landlords. They hold the fee-simple of nearly seven million acres of land, much of it fertile. This is a large estate for about fifty thousand men, women, and children. Moreover, it is a valuable estate.