It would be easy to expand this list into an essay on the vanity of human wishes.  It would not be hard to add thereto a formidable catalogue of serious mistakes made both in England and New Zealand by those responsible for the Colony’s affairs—­mistakes, some of which, at least, seem now to argue an almost inconceivable lack of knowledge and foresight.  So constantly have the anticipations of its officials and settlers been reversed in the story of New Zealand that it becomes none too easy to trace any thread of guiding wisdom or consistent purpose therein.  The broad result, however, has been a fine and vigorous colony.  Some will see in its record of early struggles, difficulties and mistakes endured, paid for and surmounted, a signal instance of the overruling care of Providence.  To the cynic the tale must be merely a minor portion of the “supreme ironic procession with laughter of gods in the background.”  To the writer it seems, at least, to give a very notable proof of the collective ability of a colonizing race to overcome obstacles and repair blunders.  The Colony of New Zealand is not a monument of the genius of any one man or group of men.  It is the outcome of the vitality and industry of a people obstinate but resourceful, selfish but honest, often ill-informed and wrong, but with the saving virtue of an ability to learn from their own mistakes.

From one standpoint the story of New Zealand ought not to take long to tell.  It stretches over less time than that of almost any land with any pretensions to size, beauty, or interest.  New Zealand was only discovered by Europeans in the reign of our King Charles I., and even then the Dutch explorer who sighted its lofty coasts did not set foot upon them.  The first European to step on to its shores did so only when the great American colonies were beginning to fret at the ties which bound them to England.  The pioneers of New Zealand colonization, the missionaries, whalers, and flax and timber traders, did not come upon the scene until the years of Napoleon’s decline and fall.  Queen Victoria had been on the throne for three years before the Colonial Office was reluctantly compelled to add the Islands to an Empire which the official mind regarded as already overgrown.

Yet so striking, varied, and attractive are the country’s features, so full of bustle, change and experiment have its few years been, that lack of material is about the last complaint that need be made by a writer on New Zealand.  The list of books on the Colony is indeed so long that its bibliography is a larger volume than this; and the chief plea to be urged for this history must be its brevity—­a quality none too common in Colonial literature.