less full than I should have liked to make it, had it been other than
the work of an unknown writer telling the story of a small archipelago
which is at once the most distant and well-nigh the youngest of
English states. I have done my best in the later chapters to describe
certain men and experiments without letting personal likes and
dislikes run away with my pen; have taken pains to avoid loading my
pages with the names of places and persons of no particular interest
to British readers; and at the same time have tried not to forget the
value of local colour and atmosphere in a book of this kind.

If _The Long White Cloud_ should fail to please a discerning public,
it will not prove that a good, well-written history of a colony like
New Zealand is not wanted, and may not succeed, but merely that I have
not done the work well enough. That may easily be, inasmuch as until
this year my encounters with English prose have almost all taken the
form of political articles or official correspondence. Doubtless these
do not afford the best possible training. But of the quality of the
material awaiting a capable writer there can be no question. There,
ready to his hand, are the beauty of those islands of mid-ocean, the
grandeur of their Alps and fiords, the strangeness of the volcanic
districts, the lavishness, yet grace, of the forests; the mixture of
quaintness, poetry, and ferocity in the Maori, and the gallant drama
of their struggle against our overwhelming strength; the adventures
of the gold-seekers and other pioneers; the high aims of the colony's
founders, and the venturesome democratic experiments of those who have
succeeded them. If in these there is not the stuff for a fine book,
then I am most strangely mistaken. And if I have failed in the
following pages, then let me hope that some fellow-countryman, and
better craftsman, will come to the rescue, and will do with a firmer
hand and a lighter touch the work attempted here.