his own, is the man of business in the market. The children of the
missionaries, who came while young to the island, understand the
language better than their parents, and can get anything more readily
done by the natives.
A little before noon Messrs. Williams and Davies walked with me to a
part of a neighbouring forest, to show me the famous kauri pine. I
measured one of the noble trees, and found it thirty-one feet in
circumference above the roots. There was another close by, which I did
not see, thirty-three feet; and I heard of one no less than forty feet.
These trees are remarkable for their smooth cylindrical boles, which
run up to a height of sixty, and even ninety feet, with a nearly equal
diameter, and without a single branch. The crown of branches at the
summit is out of all proportion small to the trunk; and the leaves are
likewise small compared with the branches. The forest was here almost
composed of the kauri; and the largest trees, from the parallelism of
their sides, stood up like gigantic columns of wood. The timber of the
kauri is the most valuable production of the island; moreover, a
quantity of resin oozes from the bark, which is sold at a penny a pound
to the Americans, but its use was then unknown. Some of the New
Zealand forest must be impenetrable to an extraordinary degree. Mr.
Matthews informed me that one forest only thirty-four miles in width,
and separating two inhabited districts, had only lately, for the first
time, been crossed. He and another missionary, each with a party of
about fifty men, undertook to open a road, but it cost more than a
fortnight's labour! In the woods I saw very few birds. With regard to
animals, it is a most remarkable fact, that so large an island,
extending over more than 700 miles in latitude, and in many parts
ninety broad, with varied stations, a fine climate, and land of all
heights, from 14,000 feet downwards, with the exception of a small rat,
did not possess one indigenous animal. The several species of that
gigantic genus of birds, the Deinornis seem here to have replaced
mammiferous quadrupeds, in the same manner as the reptiles still do at
the Galapagos archipelago. It is said that the common Norway rat, in
the short space of two years, annihilated in this northern end of the
island, the New Zealand species. In many places I noticed several
sorts of weeds, which, like the rats, I was forced to own as
countrymen. A leek has overrun whole districts, and will prove very
troublesome, but it was imported as a favour by a French vessel. The
common dock is also widely disseminated, and will, I fear, for ever
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