The Long White Cloud: "Ao Tea Roa"

by William Pember Reeves

E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Tim Koeller,
and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

---

THE LONG WHITE CLOUD

"AO TEA ROA"

By William Pember

1899

Agent-General In London For New Zealand

Preface

I believe that there is amongst the people of the Mother Country a minority, now ceasing to be small, which takes a quickening interest in the Colonies. It no longer consists merely of would-be investors, or emigrants who want to inquire into the resources, industries, and finances of one or other of the self-governing parts of the Empire. Many of its members never expect to see a colony. But they have come to recognise that those new-comers into the circle of civilized communities, the daughter nations of Britain, are not unworthy of English study and English pride. They have begun to suspect that the story of their struggles into existence and prosperity may be stirring, romantic, and interesting, and that some of their political institutions and experiments may be instructive, though others may seem less safe than curious. Some of those who think thus complain that it is not always easy to find an account of a colony which shall be neither an official advertisement, the sketch of a globe-trotting impressionist, nor yet an article manufactured to order by some honest but untravelled maker of books. They ask—or at least some of them, to my knowledge, ask—for a history in which the picturesque side of the story shall not be ignored, written simply and concisely by a writer who has made a special study of his subject, or who has lived and moved amongst the places, persons, and incidents he describes.