New York, 1909); J. H. Innes, New Amsterdam and its People (New York, 1902); Martha J. Lamb, History of the City of New York (2 vols., New York, 1877); Memorial History of the City of New York (4 vols., New York, 1892), edited by J. G. Wilson; Theodore Roosevelt, New York (New York, 1895) in the “Historic Towns” series; R. R. Wilson, New York: Old and New; Its Story, Streets and Landmarks (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1902; new ed., 1909); D. T. Valentine, History of the City of New York (New York, 1853); and Historic New York, edited by Maud W. Goodwin et al. (2 vols., New York, 1899).
NEW ZEALAND, a British colonial Dominion (so named in 1907), consisting mainly of a group of islands lying in the south Pacific between 34° 25′ and 47° 17′ S., and between 166° 26′ and 178° 36′ E. The group is situated eastward of Tasmania and Victoria, and Wellington, its capital and central seaport, is 1204 m. distant from Sydney. Of certain outlying clusters of small islands belonging to the colony, the Chathams (356 m. E. of Cook Strait), Aucklands and Campbell Island are alone of any value. All these are grassy and the Chathams are inhabited by sheep-farming colonists. The Aucklands contain two of the finest harbours in the Pacific. Six hundred miles north of Auckland, the volcanic Kermadecs, covering 8208 acres, are picturesquely clothed with vegetation. In Polynesia a number of inhabited islands were brought under New Zealand control in 1893. Rarotonga and Mangaia, in the Cook group, and Niué or Savage Island are the largest of these; Penrhyn and Suwarrow, though but small coral atolls, contain excellent harbours. Rarotonga is hilly, well watered, and very beautiful. Apart from these little tropical dependencies New Zealand has an area of 104,471 sq. m., of which its two important islands, called North and South, contain 44,468 and 58,525 respectively, while, divided from South Island by Foveaux Strait, Rakiura or Stewart Island, mountainous and forest-clad, contains 621 sq. m. These three form a broken chain, North and South Islands being cut asunder by Cook Strait, a channel varying in width from 16 to 90 m.
North Island is 515 m. long and varies in breadth from 6 to 200 m. It is almost cleft in twain where the Hauraki Gulf penetrates to within 6 m. of Manukau Harbour. From the isthmus thus formed a narrow, very irregular peninsula reaches out northward for some 200 m., moist and semi-tropical, and beautiful rather than uniformly fertile. Rich strips of alluvial soil, however, seam a cold clay-marl, needing intensive cultivation to become highly productive. Buried in this clay-marl are found large deposits of the fossil resin which becomes the kauri gum of commerce; and on the surface extensive forests are still a great though diminishing source of wealth. Though a species of mangrove fringes much of this peninsula, its presence does not denote malaria, from which the islands are entirely free.
South of the isthmus aforesaid, North Island rapidly broadens out. Its central physical feature is the unbroken mountain chains running N.E. from Cook Strait to East Cape on the Bay of Plenty, ranges seldom under 3000 ft., but never attaining 6000 ft. in height. Ikurangi, their highest summit, though a fine mass, does not compare with the isolated volcanic cones which, rising W. of the main mountain system and quite detached from it, are among the most striking sights in the island. Ruapehu (9100 ft.) is intermittently active, and Ngauruhoe (7515 ft.) emits vapour and steam incessantly. Egmont (8340 ft.) is quiescent, but its symmetrical form and dense clothing of forest make it the most beautiful of the three. North of the two first-mentioned volcanoes Lake Taupo spreads over 238 sq. m. in the centre of a pumice-covered plateau from 1000 to 2000 ft. above the sea; and round and beyond the great lake the region of the thermal springs covers 5000 sq. m. and stretches from Mount Ruapehu to White Island, an ever-active volcanic cone in the Bay of Plenty. The most uncommon natural feature of the district, the Pink and White Terraces, was blown up in the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886, when for great distances the country was buried beneath mud and dust, and a chasm 9 m. long was opened in the earth. Fine lakes and waterfalls, innumerable pools, in temperature from boiling-point to, cold, geysers, solfataras, fumaroles and mud volcanoes still attract tourists in large numbers. The healing virtue of many of the springs is widely-known. The government maintains a sanatorium at Lake Rotorua, and there are private bathing establishments in other places, notably near Lake Taupo. In South Island there are hot pools and a state sanatorium at Hanmer Plains. Experience shows that the most remarkable cures effected by the hot waters are in cases of gout, rheumatism, diseases of the larynx and in skin disorders. Though, thanks to the overlaying porous pumice, the Taupo plateau is not fertile, it has a good rainfall and is drained by unfailing rivers running through deep terraced ravines. The Waikato and Waihou flow N., the Rangitaiki N.E., and Mokau, Wanganui and Rangitikei W. or S.W. The first named, the longest river in the colony, though obstructed by a bar like all western,—and most eastern,—New Zealand rivers, is navigable for some 70 m. The Mokau and Wanganui run between ferny and forest-clad hills and precipices, often of almost incomparable beauty.
East of the Taupo plateau and south of Opotiki on the Bay of Plenty the steep thickly-timbered ranges held by the Uriwera tribe still show scenery quite unspoiled by white intrusion. On the southern frontier of this mountainous tract Waikaré Moana extends its arms, the deepest and most beautiful of the larger lakes of the island.
From the mouth of the Waikato southward to about 25 m. from Cape Terawhiti on Cook Strait, and for a distance of from 20 to 40 m. inland, the western coast skirts fertile country well fitted for grazing and dairy-farming, to which it is being rapidly turned as the timber and fern are cleared away from its low hills, downs and rich valleys. On the east coast the same fertility is seen with less forest, and, round Hawkes Bay, a hotter and drier summer. In the south centre, the upland plain of the Wairarapa, ending in a large but commonplace lake, has a climate adapted for both grazing and cereals. The butt-end of the island, of poor, rough, wind-beaten hills, is redeemed by the fine harbour of Port Nicholson, which vies with the Waitemata in utility to New Zealand commerce. Broken as is the surface, poor as is the soil of certain tracts, there is but little of the island which will not ultimately be cultivated with profit as pumice and clay-marl yield to labour. Everywhere the settler may count on a sufficient rainfall, and—except on the plateau and the mountain highlands—mild winters and genial summers. The pleasant climate has certain drawbacks; the coastal farmer finds that blights and insect pests thrive in the comparative absence of hard frosts. Fortunately mosquitoes are not a serious plague outside a few marshy localities. To pass Cook Strait and land in the middle province of South Island is to pass from Portugal to Switzerland, a Switzerland, however, with a seacoast that in the east centre is a dull fringe of monotonous sand dunes or low cliffs. As a rule, nevertheless, the shores of South Island are high and bold enough. They are not too well served with harbours, except along Cook Strait, in Banks Peninsula, and by the grand but commercially useless fjords of the south-west. In the last-named region some fifteen salt-water gulfs penetrate into the very heart of the mountains, winding amid steep, cloud capped ranges, and tall, richly-clothed cliffs overhanging their calm waters. The dominating features of south New Zealand are not ferny plateaus or volcanic cones, but stern chains of mountains. There the Southern Alps rise range upon range, filling the whole centre, almost or quite touching the Western shore, and stretching from end to end of the island. West of the dividing crest they are forest clad; east thereof their stony grimness is but slightly softened by growths of scrub and tussock grass. Nineteen-twentieths of the colonists, however, live east of the dividing range, for to that side settlement was attracted by the open, grassy character of the country. The rivers are many, even on the drier eastern coast. But, as must be expected in an island but 180 m. across at the widest point and yet showing ridges capped with perpetual snows, the rivers, large or small, are mountain torrents, now swollen floods, anon half dry. Almost useless for communication or transport, they can be easily drawn upon for irrigation where, as in the east centre, water-races are useful. The largest river, the Clutha, though but 80 m. long in its course to the south-east coast, discharges a volume of water
