43.New Zealand

NEW Zealand, together with her newly acquired possessions among the Samoan Islands, is one and a quarter times as large as England and Scotland together. The population is 1,500,000 of whom 143,000 live in Wellington, the capital, which is situated on the North Island.

It was first seen by Abel Tasman in the year 1642 and was called by him after that southern island province of his native land in which the first part of this geography was written. Some three centuries before it had been discovered by the Polynesian canoemen, those marvellous mariners of the Pacific, whose queerly shaped straw maps were so dependable that they could sail thousands of miles from home and always be sure of finding their way back.

These Polynesian conquerors became the ancestors of the warlike and handsome race of the Maoris, of whom there were some 50,000 left in the year 1906,and who since then seem to be again on the increase. The Maoris are evidently one of the few examples of a native stock which has been able to maintain itself against the white man and to adopt some of the more agreeable virtues of western civilization without at the same time drinking itself to death.They have given up several of their ancient habits and customs, such as eating their enemies and tattooing their faces, and they send representatives to the New Zealand parliament and build churches which are in every way as unattractive as the chapels constructed by their white masters, all of which bids well for the future, as far as the racial problem is concerned.

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century both the French and the English tried to get hold of these islands by means of their respective missionaries. But in the year 1833 the Maoris put themselves under the protection of the English and in the year 1839 the English formally took possession of all New Zealand territory.

If the French squadron had been three days earlier, New Zealand would today be a French colony like New Caledonia and the Marquesas and so many other islands of the Pacific. In 1840 the islands became a dependency of the Australian colony of New South Wales and in 1847 an English Crown Colony.In the year 1901,New Zealand was given a chance to join the Australian commonwealth, but, proud of the fact that it had never been a penal establishment, it declined the honor, Since 1907 it has been an independent dominion with an English governor-general but a representative government of its own.

As for the geological aspect of these two big islands, they have probably never been part of the Australian mainland, for the Tasman Sea which separates them is more than 15,000 feet deep and 1200 miles wide. They are probably the remnants of a high mountain-range which once upon a time formed the western shores of the Pacific.But the changes have been so numerous that it is difficult to state precisely how the present islands came into being.What makes their case even more difficult is the fact that they have so little in common with each other.Whereas North Island is a tremendously volcanic region(a sort of Yellowstone Park of the Pacific),South Island, separated from North Island by the Cook Strait, which is only 90 miles wide, is a replica of Switzerland with a few Norwegian fjords thrown in for good measure.

New Zealand is not in any way tropical. It is as far removed from the equator as Italy and enjoys the same sort of climate.This means that it is much more likely to become a permanent European establishment than Australia.All sorts of European fruits, such as peaches and apricots and apples and grapes and oranges, can be cultivated in the valleys, while the mountain ides provide excellent grazing fields for cattle.Flax grows as well here as in the moist climate of the old Zeeland and the slow growing trees of the North Island, exported chiefly from Auckland, make excellent timber.

In the year 1901 New Zealand annexed a number of islands of the Pacific. Among them were the Cook Islands and the Island of Rarotonga from where, according to the Maori belief, New Zealand got its first Polynesian settlers.The Cook Islands are still of volcanic origin but thereupon we leave the volcanic belt and get into the midst of the coral islands.

These are formed by little marine organisms, the Anthozoa or“flower-animals”,which die but whose assembled skeletons are responsible for the thousands of reefs and islets which dot this part of the Pacific Ocean. These polyps are fussy creatures.They can only live in fresh salt water of a certain temperature.A single frost will kill them.They cannot descend lower than about 120 feet.Whenever we find coral deposits lower than that, we know that the bottom of the ocean must have sunk from its original level.But they have been building their little islands for millions of years and their work is more enduring than that of the best masons.As they depend upon a constant supply of water-in-motion, the polyps who live in the center of the edifice are apt to die off first.The edges then continue to grow and finally they form a so-called atoll, an island consisting of a narrow ring of solid material with a circular lagoon in the center.There is usually a single entrance to such a lagoon and it is always away from the prevailing winds as the waves on the other side provide the polyps with a more abundant food supply and therefore make them grow faster.

A number of such atolls which grow cocoanuts and produce copra now belong to New Zealand and the German share of Samoa was given to the dominion as a mandate in recognition of the excellent services of the New Zealand troops druing the Great War. What they are going to do with it, I do not know.