thankful there were no copies of the 'Drawing-Room Gazette' in the
British Museum, meaning that he did not want people to read his
musical criticisms; nevertheless, I hope some day to come across back
numbers containing his articles.

The opening of 'Erewhon' is based upon Butler's colonial experiences;
some of the descriptions remind one of passages in 'A First Year in
Canterbury Settlement', where he speaks of the excursions he made
with Doctor when looking for sheep-country. The walk over the range
as far as the statues is taken from the Upper Rangitata district,
with some alterations; but the walk down from the statues into
Erewhon is reminiscent of the Leventina Valley in the Canton Ticino.
The great chords, which are like the music moaned by the statues are
from the prelude to the first of Handel's 'Trois Lecons'; he used to
say:

"One feels them in the diaphragm--they are, as it were, the groaning
and labouring of all creation travailing together until now."

There is a place in New Zealand named Erewhon, after the book; it is
marked on the large maps, a township about fifty miles west of Napier
in the Hawke Bay Province (North Island). I am told that people in
New Zealand sometimes call their houses Erewhon and occasionally
spell the word Erehwon which Butler did not intend; he treated wh as
a single letter, as one would treat th. Among other traces of
Erewhon now existing in real life are Butler's Stones on the Hokitika
Pass, so called because of a legend that they were in his mind when
he described the statues.

The book was translated into Dutch in 1873 and into German in 1897.