Page:Rambles in New Zealand.djvu/18

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at Sydney in September 1838, and soon received the first of those useful lessons which disappointment teaches. I allude to the system observed in the sale of crown lands, which, instead of being surveyed and ready for auction, so that the emigrant may commence operations with undiminished capital, compels him to waste months in idleness and expense ill adapted to the cultivation and advancement of a new colony. As the spot I had selected was at a considerable distance from Sydney, and the time to be wasted between the application and sale proportionately long, I determined to render it as little irksome and unprofitable as possible by rambling in search of information.

With this view I embarked in one of the small schooners which are constantly trading between Sydney and the Bay of Islands; made the north-west cape of New Zealand on the 4th of February, 1839, and the next day arrived in the bay. The whole coast appeared very barren, having no other vegetation than bushes and fern; it is much broken, and of a dark-coloured volcanic rock; in some places the earth on the surface is of a bright yellow or red, and apparently of an ochreous nature. The Bay of Islands, a place of late become so familiar in England from