The New Zealand of the Future.
At last I ventured to interrupt Bacon in the perusal of his learned work. “Where do you think,” I asked, “we are going to?”
To which he answered perfectly dryly: “I suppose we cannot be very far from New Zealand. We have made a considerable détour through the upper air in order to take advantage of the atmospheric current which arises between the tropics, and then extends to the north and south and east successively, but now we are descending again. See how the barometer is going up.”
Thinking on Bacon’s words, I looked once more through one of the telescopes, and at some considerable distance I viewed two large islands barely separated by a very narrow strait.
“Now we are among our antipodes,” continued Bacon. “New Zealand is the Great Britain of the Southern Pacific.”
“But still she has not anything like a population so wealthy, powerful, and civilised.”
“Still a better one than you would have imagined. Already New Zealand has several large cities with the same institutions for education and science and art as are to be found in Europe. She possesses an important commercial navy, has plenty of ore and coal mines, a splendid agriculture, innumerable herds of cattle, a flourishing industry, and an energetic population, chiefly of English descent.”
“What has become of the Maoris?”
“They have utterly disappeared, no one really knows where to. According to some New Zealand naturalists, they have died out; others imagine that they have migrated somewhere; others again are inclined to believe that a portion of the native inhabitants are of lineal Maoric descent. If this were the case, they must have considerably improved as a race; for the people here are now extremely peaceful. Should you ever visit Londinia in your travels again, you ought not to omit paying a visit to the National Museum; there you will find two embalmed Maoris, a male and a female, the former beautifully tatooed. You will see them side by side with other embalmed specimens of the aboriginals, such as New Hollanders, American Redskins, etc., all of whom have long become extinct.”