way.

"New Zealand.—A correspondent writes as follows: -Before I quitted England, I bought 200 acres of land. You must not believe half what the papers say in England respecting us. They tell you that the land you buy will be given out in a few weeks after you arrive; which land, at the same time, is scarcely found, much less surveyed. I have not yet had the land. I bought; neither have I been able to get any employment; there are so many waiting in the same New Zealand is one of the wildest places you can imagine-very mountainous, everywhere so thickly wooded that you cannot walk without a path being cut." And the following extract of a letter from Port Nicholson, appears in the Glasgow Constitutional of 30th March, 1842. "The people can get no work— there are hundreds about the place, out of employ. The Company give 14s. a-week, and rations. Most people are selling their land to get away with the first chance that offers." Now, were I to consult my own interest, I might be disposed to conceal these unfavourable accounts, as I have still a hundred acres of land in that country; but when sojourning in New South Wales, I heard so many curses poured forth upon those, who, by exaggerated statements, had induced so many of their simple-minded and unsuspicious countrymen to exchange the fertile land of their forefathers, for what they found, when too late, were only barren and inhospitable shores, that I determined, whatever others might do, that it should never at least be laid to my charge that I had been guilty of misleading any one.

From the latest accounts, however, that have been received, things seem to be doing much better at Wellington, the name given to the chief town at Port

Nicholson, and the natives there are becoming more active earning occasionally 3s. a-day. I was not the only one who accused them of being idle at first, as the following passage occurs in Chambers' Edinburgh Journal of 2d January, 1841.

Amongst the population at Port Nicholson, up to April last, were about 800 natives. Most accounts speak favourably of these individuals, and prognosticate that they will be useful as labourers. They had already been active in clearing land and building houses for the settlers. We give them,' says a colonist, (Mr. Patridge), blankets, muskets, powder, tobacco, and shirts, in exchange for pigs, potatoes, house-building, and thatching, and things of that sort." Speaking of the chiefs, the same gentleman says, (March 18), Warrepore drank tea with me to-night, and drank wine like a good Christian; but his appetite is of the largest. He is a great warrior, six feet high, and a restless fighting devil. Eponee is an orator, and a sensible fellow. Though irritable when thwarted in their prejudices and customs, they are, if civilly treated, obliging, attentive, and well behaved. To an active European they appear indolent; but it must be readily seen that a barbarian cannot all at once be broken into habits of diligent application. This must be a matter of time, and perhaps the existing generation will never be very serviceable. It is by taking the young into training that the services of the aboriginal race will be most speedily and efficiently secured. A lady (Miss Hunter) says, April 7, We are very much pleased with the natives, who seem to be intelligent and obliging, but very indolent. Another writer, (Mr. Marjoribanks,) speaks of the natives as extremely filthy, and more disposed to thrust themselves

upon the hospitality of the settlers than to work for an independent subsistence. He adverts to two princesses who live in a pig-sty, cover themselves by day with a mat of native flax, and eat vermin. But even he allows that he, by and bye, saw one of these ladies appear on a Sunday in a nice new gown that would not have disgraced a London or Parisian milliner. If once the people in general get a taste for smart dresses and superior accommodations, their barbarism and inactivity will disappear together. It is a noble and humane arrangement which this Company has been the first to make with respect to any aborigines, that a tenth part of the land is reserved for their use as free property. The reserves made for them at Port Nicholson were estimated, a few weeks after the first settlement, as worth £35,000. This appears like acting upon high principle, and forms a striking contrast with the conduct of the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, who have possessed themselves of a great deal of land in the most unscrupulous way, and now that their arts are exposed and stopped, do all they can to incense the natives against the Company's settlers."

Warrepore, whom Mr. Partridge inentions having entertained at tea, though anything but a teetotaller, was sometimes entertained by the captains of the emigrant ships, and became fond at last of a glass of wine. I saw him on one occasion, when he had had a drop too much, strip himself naked on the beach, in order to give the spectators a specimen of his war dance. The feelings of the English ladies who happened to be present on this trying occasion it is easier to imagine than describe.

Wellington, now presents the appearance of a bus

tling town, as including the Scotch village of Kaiwarawara, situated a mile from it, with 300 inhabitants, and the villages of Petoni and Aglionby, six or seven miles distant, at the mouth of the valley of the Hutt, where we were first located, the present inhabitants of that district amount to 6000 British, and about a 1000 natives. The number of good houses, and stores, &c. built by the British, is now estimated at 800, besides 400 native huts. The natives, seeing how much more comfortable the English houses are than their own,-in one of which my amiable friend the princess lived, are pulling them down every now and then, and constructing houses similar to ours, so that most of the superior chiefs have now tolerably well built cottages. The present value of the houses, stores, and public buildings, built there, is computed at £200,000. Upwards of 1000 vessels have anchored within the bay since the colony was first founded in 1840, and in 1844 five vessels arrived direct from it in Britain, loaded with native produce, viz. oil, whalebone, flax, ornamental woods, and wool, the whole valued at £60,000.

The valley of the Hutt, where it was originally intended to have placed the town, is now getting fast into cultivation. It is fortunate that it was abandoned as a township, as the water on one occasion, rose three or four feet in several of the huts, so that some of the guests of a gentleman, who happened to give a ball and supper at that time, arrived in their boats, instead of their carriages; and instead of a stable had to use an anchor. The soil in this valley, when cleared of the timber, is rich beyond measure, being eight or ten feet deep of beautiful black vegetable mould, and will consequently require no manure for many years.

Mr. Molesworth cleared 100 acres in this valley, previous to his departure for this country in 1844, and his potatoe crop, in 1842, produced twelve tons per acre, some of which he sold at £10 a ton, or at the rate of £120 per acre, though the circumstance of his having obtained that price, even for a small quantity, arose from the colony being then comparatively in its infancy. The average return per acre of land in this valley, is forty bushels of wheat, and ten tons of potatoes. The natives, when they dig their potatoes, leave the small ones in the ground to grow larger,—an admirable plan, as there is no frost to hurt them in that country. Some of Mr. Molesworth's potatoes, the produce of native seed, measured nine inches in length, and the wheat grown in this valley, was five feet and a half in length, and the ears full and large in proportion. The cost of clearing, fencing, planting, hoeing, and digging, the first crop of potatoes, amounted to about £30 an acre, so that the expence of clearing the land of its heavy timber, (averaging £20 an acre), was repaid by the first crop. There are 7000 acres surveyed and given out in this valley, which may be said to comprise all the level land in it, but as most of the sections are very good, when they come all to be cleared and rendered available, which will be the case in the course of a couple of years, the produce, with two crops in the year, will be immense,-sufficient, it is thought, for the whole inhabitants of that district. Those settlers who are located at Aglionby, on the Hutt, about two miles from its embouchure, are chiefly sawyers and labourers, employed on the clearings in the valley.

The land at Wellington is becoming valuable, par