Yet so crowded with incident is the brief period named that I have practically confined the story to the most prominent of the facts indexed in the New Zealand Official Year Book for 1906. Even with this limitation there is not space enough in which to tell the whole romantic story. At most, an impression of the vivid happenings of the past can be presented, and this is what I have tried to do.
I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to those who, being dead, yet speak—Thomson, Gudgeon, "A Pakeha Maori," and others,—whose vanished hands picturesquely chronicled some of the events with which this story is concerned. From Sir George Grey, the gentle "Knight of the Kawan," I had the legend of the Loves of Heaven and Earth and the defiance of their rebellious sons. To the Honourable William Pember Reeves, High Commissioner for New Zealand in London, I am greatly obliged for books of reference and the loan of valuable photographs.
If I am not one of them, I yet claim the consideration of the Children of the Dominion, since I am connected with them by ties of kin and happy memories of childhood and youth lived under the Southern Cross, here and there among the islands on both sides of the Tasman Sea. Also the Dominion has already given me some of the facts of her colonial days as a basis for fiction. So it is permissible to hope that the shortcomings of this book will be forgiven, and that those of the Dominion who may read will recognise throughout its pages a whole-hearted admiration for their country and all that belongs to it.
If I please some, I shall be rewarded. For the rest, since "'tis not in mortals to command success," then, est quadam prodire tenus, si non datur ultra.
REGINALD HORSLEY.
NEW ZEALAND