on, and its especial story told, in which, I note,
the narrator generally seems to have been the most prominent figure
himself. No one is allowed to remain below, even for meals, scarcely for
sleeping; he or she must be up on deck to hear strange-sounding names
applied to every place we sight.

Cape Kara-Kara is a name to us and nothing more. Whangaroa Heads, that
guard the harbour of that name, with its settlements and saw-mills, is
but little better, though some few, who have been industriously reading
up, remember Whangaroa as the scene of the ghastly massacre of the crew
of the _Boyd_, half a century ago. Capes Wiwiki and Brett we have no
previous acquaintance with, though we have heard of the Bay of Islands,
over whose wide entrance they are the twin sentinels. And then in slow
succession we sight the Poor Knights Islands, Bream Head, the Hen and
Chickens, the Barrier Islands--Great and Little, Cape Colville, Rodney
Point, and the Kawau, Sir George Grey's island home.

And now, on the afternoon of the second day, we are running closer and
closer to the shore; islands and islets are becoming more numerous, and
the seas are getting narrower. Right ahead a conical mountain top is
perceived, Tiri-Tiri is close to, and it is high time the pilot came
aboard. That mountain top is Rangitoto, an extinct volcanic cone upon a
small island that protects the entrance to Auckland Harbour. Presently
we shall see the similar elevations of Mount Eden and Mount Hobson, that
look down on Auckland from the mainland.

Of course, we are all on the _qui vive_ of expectation, looking out for
the first signs of life. Hitherto we have seen nothing to rob us of the
notion that we are a veritable cargo of Columbuses, coming to colonize
some new and virgin land, until now utterly unknown to the rest of the
world. The shores we have passed along have presented to us every
possible variety of savage wilderness, rocks and bush and scrub and
fern, but no appearance of settlement at all, not even any signs of
aboriginal life have we descried.

There is a growing idea getting the better of our common sense--an
impression that there has been some sort of mistake somewhere or other.
For, how can it be possible that we are just outside the harbour of a
considerable city, with the shores of mainland and island as far as we
can see, just as wild as Nature made them, wilder than anything most of
us have ever seen before. The utmost recesses of Scotland