Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/384

 vessels departed without committing some act of violence." Nearly two hundred miles north of Auckland, on and at the base of low red hills overlooking a pretty harbor, is the sleepy little town of Mangonui, which some day will be the northern terminus of the North Auckland Main Trunk Railway. Near it are extensive mangrove swamps, slimy nurseries of the sea overrun by tiny crabs. In the swampy districts north of it are some of the richest kauri deposits in New Zealand. Of all the principal industries of New Zealand the most singular is the kauri-gum industry. Soon after reaching Auckland I heard of gum-stores, gum-merchants, gum-brokers, and of lonely gum-seekers, who pitched their tents in wastes of fern and tea-tree. When I scanned a newspaper I saw paragraphs about gum quotations, and I found gum displayed in many windows. On Customs Street I discovered kauri-gum merchants to be as common as mercers and hatters on Queen Street. Altogether it was quite a gummy place.

Kauri gum exists only in the Auckland Land District, south of which the kauri tree does not grow, and mainly north of Auckland City. In the latter portion of the district so large is the area overturned by gum-diggers that in sections of it which I traversed the whole countryside seemed to have been spaded up. Properly this resinous product is not gum, but it is universally so called in New Zealand. The New Zealand gum is valued chiefly for its