M. Von Buch conceives that the enormous circuit, beginning with New Zealand and extending through Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Solomon’s Island, New Britain, New Hanover, New Ireland, Louisiade, and New Guinea, once formed the western and northern boundary of the Australian continent. New Zealand, divided into three islands by rocky and dangerous channels, is superior to Australia in richness of soil, fertility, and beauty; it abounds in a variety of vegetable and mineral productions. High mountains, of volcanic origin, run through the islands, which, in the most northerly, rise 14,000 feet above the stormy ocean around, buried two-thirds of their height in permanent snow and glaciers, exhibiting on the grandest scale all the alpine characters, with the addition of active volcanos on the eastern and western coasts: that of Tangarara pours forth deluges of boiling water, which deposit vast quantities of siliceous sinter like the Geysers in Iceland; and such is the vitality of the vegetation, that plants grow richly on the banks, and even in water too hot to be endured.[75] The coast is a frozen country, overspread with a most luxuriant but dark and gloomy vegetation. There are undulating tracts and table-lands of great extent without a tree, over-run by ferns and a low kind of myrtle; but the mountain-ridges are clothed with dense and gigantic forests. There is much good land and many lakes, with navigable rivers, the best of harbours, and a mild climate; so that no country is better suited for a prosperous and flourishing colony. It may be considered, even at this early period of its colonial existence, as the Great Britain of the southern hemisphere. A very different scene from the stormy seas of New Zealand presents itself to the north of Australia. There, vivified by the glowing sun of the equator, the islands of the Indian Archipelago are of matchless beauty, crowned by lofty mountains, loaded with aromatic verdure, that shelve to the shore, or dip into a transparent glassy sea. Their coasts are cut by deep inlets, and watered by the purest streams, which descend in cascades rushing through wild crevices. The whole is so densely covered with palms and other beautiful forms of tropical vegetation that they seem to realize a terrestrial paradise. Papua or New Guinea, the largest island in the Pacific after New Holland, is 1100 miles long and 400 in width, with mountains rising above mountains, till in the west they attain the height of 16,000 feet, capped with snow, and two volcanos burn on its northern shores. From its position so near the equator it is probable that New Guinea has the same vegetation with the Spice Islands to the east, and, from the little that is known of it, must be one of the finest countries in existence.