that I have yet much to learn, and that there is great room for improvement in these and other respects.
However, if the reader will accept my pages, as a homely unpretending record of a very delightful trip, through "The Wonderland of the South Pacific," I hope my comments on what we witnessed, and my revelation of the change and progress, effected by twenty years of colonization, may prove both interesting and instructive.
I have tried to describe simply and truthfully what I saw, and what I thought. My most earnest hope is, that what I have written may enkindle in the hearts of our kinsmen in the dear old mother land, who may read this book, a livelier, deeper, and kindlier interest in the fortunes of their loyal and loving Cousins, of Australia and New Zealand.
J.I.
Craigo, Strathfield, Sydney, N.S.W.
May, 1886.