NEW ZEALAND.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 181, 15 July 1859, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand seems destined to exert a great influence in the Pacific. It lies so as to intercept all the traffic from the Continent of America with its oceanic neighbour, Australia. The latter colony owes its present importance to the discovery of the glittering nuggets which gave such an immense stimulus uTwhat.has loeen facetiously denominated the fifth quarter of the globe. Small collections of wooden shanties in Victoria have given way to stately residences of stone and brick. Piles.of warehouses rear their heads, and the trade of Australia with England exceeds in value the British Commerce with the 200,000,000 of people in India. Our Eastern Empire has increased our national debt, whilst on the other hand, the Australian gold has helped to lighten our load. Instead, therefore, of draining away our young blood to perish in the swamps of the East, every man who goes out to Australia or New Zealand helps to diminish the number of mere consumers here, and to raise up new producers and customers on the other side of the hemisphere. Australia and New Zealand were for years neglected, but more particularly the latter Colony. There was, for a long period, a seeming cause for this heedless inattention to the advantages of those fine isles. The " land of promise" was thrown into the shade by too much intermeddling legislation in the Home Colonial Secretary's Department. New Zealand, at length, has attracted the notice of intending emigrants. This is clue to several influences, but more particularly to the influx of people to Australia, and the scarcity of food attending such a sudden rush of thousands to a country where but a small portion of land was under culture. The digger wanted food, and this gave an impetus to.the cultivation of the soil of New Zealand. Vast quantities of cereals and lumber were sent to Australia to feed the hungry and to run up habitations. Since that windfall there has been a steady and continuous increase of shipment from New Zealand, and the inter-colonial trade has become of so much importance as to lead to the subsidising of a regular mail steam-packet service between New Zealand and Sydney. The value of these southern isles, growing as they are in public estimation, will at no very distant period equal the Oanadas in population. Our surplus hands who go there to till the fields and cut down the timber will, whilst adding to the wealth of the Colony, give increased employment to the British " Flag. The islands contain within themselves all the elements necessary to create an independent State, and life and property are secure. The recent discovery of a good coal may be. taken as the herald of manufacturing industry. Gold, which has been found in the Nelson district, may allure the fickle to her shores, but the " black diamond" will do more for her permanent prosperity. Our columns contained recently a report of a deputation on the subject of the scarcity of flax, and the necessity of its culture in India; but in New Zealand the flax is so over-abun-dant as to become a nuisance, and the Colonial Legislature has offered rewards to those who shall first prepare it, and find a profitable market in Europe for its purchase. Hemp, therefore, in any quantity may be manufactured there. The colony has commenced to export wool on such an extensive scale as to lead to the prospect of New Zealand, in a short time, being classed as a fiist-rate market for that indispensable raw material.

The wonder is, on considering the admirable situation of the " Britain of the South," that New Zealand should not have drawn thither the migratory class, and that capitalists of die agricultural body should have preferred the backwoods of America to the. rich lands of our Pacific Colony. It is not that'able men who have visited New-Zea-land have failed to write an account of the islands, and their capacity to find food and labour for the millions yet to settle there. On the contrary, we have the most trustworthy compilations by talented yet disinterested; men. Even 'so far. back as 1814, the Rev. Samuel Marsden, the senior chaplain of New South Wales, who was the first to found a missionary establishment in New Zealand, gave a glowing picture of the wonderful resources of the islands and the richness of the soil. Later, in 1835, the Church Missionary Society caused the information, gathered from a seven years' residence in' New Zealand, of the Rev. William Tate, to be published for general information', and to aid in the propagation of the gospel in that sea., This book gave a description of eveiy tree, plant, and herb to be found on the Northern Island. Though a bulky book and now almost obsolete, from the change

of, names and the settlements formed since that period, it is worthy of being perused by any intending settler. ' The author remarked of New Zealand that its -climate was temperate, neither exposed to scorching heats in summer nor to blasting frosts in winter, though the summer was warm and the winter cold. He found it salubrious and congenial to European constitutions, observing that those who went there sickly were soon restored to health. He noticed that the islands contained every variety of soil. Large tracts of good land available for the cultivation of wheat, barley, maize, beans, pease, and extensive tracts of alluvial soil. The observations of other visitors confirm this author's catalogue of agreeables to be met with in the region; and yet, from bungling of some sort or other, until within the last year or two, emigrants were deterred by the insecure title to land and the high price fixed on allotments by the Government, from fixing their home in New Zealand. Things having changed, the tide of emigration is now setting in for those isles, and the names of such Ports as Auckland, Plymouth, Nelson, Otago, Canterbury, and Wellington are becoming familiar to the ear. The British and American settlements in California, Oregon, and Vancouver's Island, will ultimately tend to -enlarge the trade with New Zealand. There are some good clipper ships lo be met with in that ocean, and "the passage seems to be a favorable one. Several instances of very short runs from the American seaboard to Australia have been reported in our columns. Such quick voyages prove that the Pacific Ocean is admirably adapted for the employmeut of steamships. New South Wales has sent a delegate to England charged with the important mission of establishing a line of mail steamers from Panama to Sydney. These vessels will touch, both on their outward and homeward voyage, at New Zealand: so that we may reasonably anticipate that at no distant period, we shall have New Zealand news of a date not exceeding fifty days. With the whole of North and South America the commmunication will be shorter by. days or weeks, according to position. Indeed, what with British ideas and Yankee notions, New Zealand seems predestined to cut a very respectable figure as a growing giant of the Anglo-Saxon race. —Shipping Gazette.

The Bernard of Industry and Uprightness. —The Mayoralty of our large towns testifies every year to the facilities in this much abused country for rising from station to station until wealth and influence are obtained. At this moment signal instances are afforded at Manchester and Leeds. The gentleman who has for the second time been chosen Mayor of Manchester was some years ago a working mason in Glasgow. He left that city with a letter of introduction from a Dissenting Minister, for a town in the North of England, and where the letter secured him employment. Shortly afterwards he was engaged at Findlater's at Dublin; this was the turning point of his fortunes; ere long it was " Findlater, Maclae, and Co." He is now one of the wealthiest men in Manchester, and a general favorite. He has always been liberal with his purse, and the quality does not desert, him. He attended the other day at a meeting, at which the gentleman who befriended him in the early days was present, and while pleading for a charitable object, he said, "The first sovereign I ever gave away in my life was to the Rev. Mr. , for "some schools ? and it was rather a hard pull for me, for I had only two in the world." ■ The Mayor of Leeds, who has given Mr. Bright such a dressing, was formerly a mechanic in the employ of an engineer. I have heard the successive stages in his career thus touched upon by an eminent member of his profession:— " The first time I knew him," he said, " he acted as my foreman in some works at the North, and he was paid the ordinary wages. The next time I met him in consultation as a brother engineer upon an important work; the third was as a fellow member of a deputation from a scientific society appointed to wait upon Prince Albert; and the fourth, at the British Association at Leeds, a few days ago, just after my friend had been entertaining her Majesty at his country sea t. " — Correspondent of Cambridge Independent Press.

Incident of the Battle of JBlinker Bill. — Mr. J. T. Headley, in his Diary of a Chaplain in the Army of the Revolution, relates the following :—" At the Battle of Bunker Hill, as the British were advancing through Charles-town to the attack, a soldier entered a house where the husband lay sick. His wife was young and beautiful, and hearing the soldier in the next room, went out to meet him. He immediately addressed insulting proposals to her. Being angrily repulsed, he ■attempted violence, when her screams aroused her sick husband from his bed. Nerved with the sudden excitement, he leaped up, and, seeing his wife struggling in the arms of a British soldier, ran him through the body. The man fell back on the floor, and, as his eyes met those of his destroyer, he shrieked out,- 'My brother!' The recognition was mutual, and with the exclamation, • I have murdered my brother!' the over-excited invalid husband fell dead on the corpse. These unhappy brothers were Scotchmen. One had emigrated to America several years before, the other had joined the English army, and, after a long separation, thus met to perish together."

'■".What are you about?'' inquired a lunatic of a cook who was industriously stripping the feathers from afowl. " Dressing a chicken," answered the cook. " I should call that undressing," said the crazy chap in reply. The cook looked reflective.

A German writer says that the people of the United States, can burst more steam boilers arid chew more tobacco than any oilier five nations on the.globe.