Gravesend to that port; and she carries some three hundred emigrants and passengers on board. We have grown so accustomed to our good ship, and to our life on board of her, that we have got a strange feeling that this voyaging will never end; nor does the idea altogether arouse our discontent.

We have had one or two births, and, alas! one poor child has been taken from our little company. There have, of course, been no weddings on board, but the prevailing opinion is that several have been arranged to take place as soon as we get on shore. And the time is very near now.

At last, late one afternoon, as the ship is bowling steadily along with a ten-knot breeze on the port quarter, the deck is hailed from aloft, and the cheery, long-expected, and long-wished-for cry of "land ho!" is taken up by a hundred voices, and rings out across the sea. But there is nothing to be seen for all that; and though more than three hundred pairs of eyes keep anxious ward and watch, darkness falls before an almost imperceptible cloud upon the far horizon is pronounced oracularly by the mate to be Cape Maria Van Diemen, New Zealand's north-western-most promontory.

One may easily imagine that it is difficult to "turn in" on a night when such a fresh excitement fills every mind, but, I suppose, most of us do contrive to get to sleep eventually. With the first break of dawn in the morning there is a stir and commotion all through the ship. Rules are forgotten, and etiquette broken through, as men, women, and children rush hastily on deck to take their first look at our future home.

It is a beautiful summer morning. There is only a slight ripple on the surface of the water, and not a cloud in the blue sky overhead. The gentle breeze that just keeps us in motion blows off the land, bearing with it a subtle perfume of trees and flowers and herbage; how unspeakably grateful to our nostrils none can tell so well as we, who inhale it with ardour after so many weeks at sea.

Yonder, a mile or two to starboard, and seeming within a stone's throw, is the land we have come so far to seek. A wall of rock, the northern cliff of New Zealand rises abrupt and imposing from the sea, broken here and there into groups of pillared, pinnacled islets, nobly irregular in outline, piled and scarred, indented and projected, uplifted and magnificent. On the summit of the cliffs, on ledges and terraces, down at the bottom of the rocks, filling every little bay, and sweeping down the gullies and ravines, is everywhere abundant the wild foliage of the evergreen forest. Glorifying the rich and splendid scene, diversifying with numberless effects of light and shadow the whole panorama, shining upon the glowing sea, touching the topmost crags with sparkling grandeur, and bathing in beauty the thousand-tinted green of the forest, is the sun, which, on the eastern horizon, is rising clear and bright and steady. And so we gaze rapturously on the wide and beautiful picture—a picture the remembrance of which will remain with us long: our first sight of the new land of hope and promise.

Varied are the emotions that take possession of the individuals of our company; but I think there are some among us, more thoughtful or sentimental, perhaps, who, unconsciously to themselves, draw a kind of inspiration from the noble scene. To such there seems, in those majestic cliffs, sea-swept and forest-crowned, first seen as lighted by the rising sun, a nameless sermon preached, a wordless lesson taught, an everlasting poem sung. And our minds and spirits are calmed, refreshed, and invigorated; while in some dim way we grasp ideas that the silent scene irresistibly conveys to us. Rising within us, as we gaze, comes with fresh new force the knowledge of the qualities that should be ours: the high-hoping courage, the unshrinking energy, the dauntless resolution, and the unfailing industry that must animate the colonist, and be the best endowments of an inceptive nation!

Later in the day we round the North Cape, and go sailing on down the coast, with light and rather baffling winds that eventually bring us to port on the following evening.

Among our passengers are several old colonists, who are returning from a visit "home." In the colonies Great Britain is always spoken of as "home," even by colonial-born people. Talk about the raptures at returning to "my own, my native land!" that is nothing to the transports of joy that now infect our colonists. They laugh, they sing, they dance about the decks, they chatter "sixteen to the dozen," and display every eccentricity of unbounded delight and satisfaction.

Probably a good deal of this is put on for the edification of us new chums, but there is no question that most of it is an expression of real feeling. All through the voyage these good people have been in great force, relating numberless yarns of their past experiences, more or less truthful in detail. But now their self-importance is overwhelming and superior to all considerations. Every headland, bay, or island that we pass is expatiated upon, 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, or Ireland, or Wales would look quite tame and domesticated contrasted with these rugged solitudes. Not a house nor a hut anywhere, not a trace of the presence of man, not even—so it chanced—another sail