ercial importance. Situated
as it were in the centre of this Austral Ocean, the future highway of
the world, it is accessible from all quarters. On the west, not far
away, lie the busy harbors of Australia, with which her exchanges of
merchandise are constant. Within easy reach of India and China on one
side, she has California, Mexico, and South America on the other. To the
north lie the hundreds of islands which constitute the groups of
Polynesia, notable for their voluptuous climate and primitive fertility.
With the opening of the Panama Canal or other available means for
crossing the isthmus, New Zealand will lie directly in the highway
between Europe and the gold-fields of the great island-continent,--between
England and her largest colony. The insular position of the country does
not necessarily indicate inaccessibility. The many beautiful islands of
the South Sea must sooner or later come under the commercial sway of New
Zealand, as they may be explored and civilized. Her admirable harbors,
noble estuaries, and navigable rivers are elsewhere unsurpassed. If
destined to achieve greatness, these islands, like those of great
Britain, will do so through the development and maintenance of maritime
power; and with so many advantages as they possess, we predict for them
this final accomplishment.

As an attractive country to the explorer and traveller, though so many
thousands of miles away from the beaten tracks, New Zealand is rendered
accessible by the growing facilities of our times, and certainly
combines within itself a grand variety of natural phenomena which
nowhere else are so readily reached or more striking to behold. Her soil
produces all the vegetation and fruits of the teeming tropics; and yet
within a few hours' travel of flower-clad plains, one can ascend
mountains as lofty, and behold glaciers as frigid and grand, as in
Switzerland or Norway. While perennial verdure characterizes her valleys
and plains, her lofty ranges are snow-capped all through the year. In
the north she has geysers, boiling springs, heated caldrons, and active
craters, as endless in variety as they are countless in number; in the
south she has myriads of cool lakes which for beauty of scenery excel
the Lake of Geneva, and for depth vie with the famous fjords of
Scandinavia,--thus giving us an epitome of the grandest exhibitions of
many lands. Her native race is unique, excelling nearly all others in
originality, and full of interest