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.
The year 1875 saw the abolition of the Provinces Act, in which many had from the first scented danger to the cultivation of a national spirit, and a beginning was made in the following year of the present system of local government, the colony being subdivided into counties and municipal boroughs. The old provincial spirit was not easily quenched, for many were not unnaturally inclined to esteem themselves and their own more excellent than their neighbour and his own. Still, there are very few in New Zealand who will venture to deny that to-day is better than yesterday, although there is at least one "fine old New Zealand gentleman, one of the olden time," who annually brings forward a motion for retrogression to the ancient order of things. Such conservatism is rare in liberal New Zealand, and has few hopes and fewer followers.
A most interesting event occurred in 1877; for Sir George Grey returned to power, not as Governor, but as Premier. He had made for himself a home on an island in the beautiful Hauraki Gulf, and perhaps nothing could have been more fortunate than his presence in the Colony at a time when the new union between Pakeha and Maori required the cement of perfect comprehension to render it irrefragable. Among the colonists there might be disagreement as to Sir George Grey and his policy; among the Maori there was none. To them he was ever the Kawana nui (the great Governor), the man who understood them and who cared to understand them.
For his island home the "Knight of the Kawan" did everything which it was possible for a man so liberal and refined to do. He loved it and adorned its beauty with every fresh charm he could procure. He brought thither the English rose and the Australian eucalyptus, and when Australia shall lament the wholesale destruction of her unique fauna, the sole survivors of the quaint marsupial order shall, perhaps, be found in the isle of the Kawana. This charming spot is to-day a favourite resort of holiday-makers, and Sir George Grey's mansion, bereft, alas! of its hospitable founder, still offers visitors shelter and entertainment.
The eightieth birthday of this remarkable man (whom Queen Victoria honoured with her personal friendship) was celebrated in New Zealand with the utmost enthusiasm, and at his death in 1898 there were not many who grudged him the designation of "The Great Proconsul," or cavilled when St. Paul's Cathedral received the honoured dust of one who was not only an Imperialist but a Nation-maker.
In 1886, Nature arose in violent mood and swept into ruin one of the most romantically beautiful spots in the world, and the most powerful and splendid of New Zealand's many scenic attractions—her justly-named "Wonderland." This was the hot lake of Rotomahana, with its far-famed Pink and White Terraces.
In the volcanic region between the Bay of Plenty on the north and Lake Taupo, with its giant sentinels Ruapehu and Tongariro on the south, is Lake Tarawera, overhung by the volcano of Tarawera, which had never in the memory of the Maori given any sign of eruption. A river of the same name connected the lake with the much smaller basin of Rotomahana, in which the water was hot owing to the numerous thermal springs in its immediate vicinity. Rotomahana was really a crater of explosion, and the principal boiling spring, Te Tarata, descending from terrace to terrace down to the lake, was the greatest marvel in this marvellous region.
Upon the Mount of Tarawera were the graves of many generations of Arawa heroes and chiefs of might; nor dared profane feet disturb their rest for fear of the fiery dragon which, though never yet seen by Maori eyes, kept watch and ward. At the mountain's foot lay the sister lake, into whose waters—green as the stone in far Te Wai Pounamou—flowed the river, charged with a fervent message from hot-hearted Rotomahana with his terraced fringe of white and pink, laced with the blue of pools