The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-24 00:00:00

-.1.

\\.

the gaze of Englishmen turned to the further-

-most-exttemity of our stupendous possessions

n North. America—attracted thither as it was,

first of all by the discovery of gold fields
upon the banks of Frazer River. Secondly,
by the transference of the governing power
yonder from the Hudson's Bay Company to the
Crown—from which, as a matter of course, it had

originally emanated, or rather, perhaps, it should
be said more correctly, by which it had been origi-
nally delegated, for a stipulated period, to the re-
presentatives of that great trading association !
Finally, the attention of England was attracted to
that hitherto almost overlooked portion of her vast
dominions by reason of the comprehensive scale
upon which that new and noble colony of British
Columbia was organised throughout, from its Go-
vernor downwards to the least responsible of his
subordinates.

If any yet more striking instance were required
of the unexpected manner in which the interest of
the mother country in any one of her remote pos-
sessions is sometimes awakened with unusual inten-
sity—it would be sufficient to recall to mind the
events which have latterly caused us all
to turn with a profounder solicitude than
was ever before awakened in that direction—
towards the whole majestic and gigantic sweep of
our Empire in Hindostan. That solicitude was first
of all aroused by a terrible and, as it threatened at
first to be, a wholly disastrous catastrophe—the
outbreak of the Sepoy Rebellion in Bengal. From
that evil, however, good came forth eventually.
The necessity was at length recognised of putting an
end to the monstrous anomaly of the double Govern-
ment. The result has been, as we know—the
transference there also as -in that other instance
(already mentioned) witnessed upon the opposite
shores of the Pacific, the direct transference of the
governing power to the Crown from the possession
of that effete and incompetent representative (in this
wise) of the Crown, a Great Trading Association !
The Honourable the East India Company has, in
consequence, ceased to hold its place among the
rulers of the earth—as absolutely as the Hudson's
Bay Company has ceased to govern that some-
time portion of their Minting ground now known
as the colony of British Columbia. Her MA-
JESTY'S sceptre is wielded thenceforth directly, and
no longer indirectly, over British Columbia and
over Hindostan; The interest with which those
remote portions of her dominion are regarded by
England from that time by necessity becomes pro-
portionately increased and intensified. Our com-
mercial relations with this colony and with that,
as we have before remarked, all the while growing
with our growth and strengthening with our
strength, uninterruptedly. The tide of emigration
sweeping steadily from our shores, meanwhile, with
more or less advance in volume, and it might even
be said in velocity, or at any rate in periodical fre-
quency—chiefly westwards and southwards.
Precisely in this twofold manner has the national
interest been awakened of late years in regard
to one of the very remotest of all our
colonies that noble archipelago in the South
Seas constituting our veritable Antipodes. Our
interest in the rise and progress of that far off co-
lony of ours in New Zealand has been enhanced of
late, in fact, just by the simple combination of these
ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. The con-
tinual recurrence there latterly of so many wretched
little galling wars with the natives—has in one
sense come to the aid of the colony of New Zealand,
inasmuch as it has served to fix upon it more
closely than ever the attention of the mother
country. The allurements held out by the
promoters of the Canterbury Settlement have
failed—conspicuous and is markable though
many of them undoubtedly are—to awaken an
interest in the fortunes of the colony at large,
in any respect comparable to what has unques-
tionably resulted (however indirectly) in this way,
from the variable tidings of War and Peace,
coming to us now for some time past, mail
after mail, from those antarctic regions—in
effect, as we have said, from our very
Antipodes. Englishmen living at home are quietly
becoming vividly aware at length of the facts
hitherto but obscurely known (and that moreover
in a very fregmentry sense) in regard to the attrac-
tions of New Zealand as a field for immigration.
And the more this general interest in New Zealand
has latterly increased, the larger have become the
opportunities for the gratification of the very
natural curiosity awakened by it in inquiring minds
among the masses of our home population. Books,
maps, pamphlets, newspapers relating to New Zea-
land have begun of late to drop in upon us with

greater frequency. It is not long since we took
occasion to comment upon one of the most elabo-
rate works that has yet issued from the press
in respect to this distant colony of Eng-
land in the southern hemisphere. We have
this evening the opprtimity of remarking,
nut as then, upon a single Book in reference to
New Zealand, but simultaneously upon there very
noticeable publications of a different kind relating
to New Zealand namely, to a New Zealand
Map, a New Zealand Pamphlet, and a New Zea-
land Newspaper. The Journal is a many-columned
sixpenny daily paper published at Auckland, ,
and called the New Zealander : and it is filled
(even to the advertisements) with singularly inte-
resting, and some of it, for emigrants, particularly
valuable, local information. The map is an " Au-
thentic Map" (as it calls itself—and evidently with
reason) of the Province of Auckland—a map "ex-
pressly" reduced and. engraved upon a moderate
scale from the original maps of the Commissioners for
Waste Llnds; and it is published in this reduced form
by the Messrs RIDGWAY and Sons, the authorised
general agents to the Provincial Government. It
is from the same establishment that we receive,
moreover, the brochure already here alluded
to. This publication, extending almost to the
length of a respectable volume, embracing
within it, as it does, nearly 150 octavo pages,
appears, by its designation, to be the production of
more than .a single pamphleteer, its title being
"Voices from Auckland." Yet, if it derives its origin
from several sources, its aim is certainly one and
complete in itself. The information it con •
veys to the reader—occasionally superficial
and generalised where we should wish
it to have entered more minutely into details,
occasionally, on the other hand, entering too closely
into particulars where we should have been con-
tented with something in the way of an epitome—
the information this pamphlet conveys to the reader
has, s 3 far as we may pronounce an opinion upon it,
every appearance throughout of the most reliable au-

thenticity. From map, from book, from brochure, from
newspaper the untravelled Englishman may thus
without quitting his easy-chair derive all the intel-
ligence about New Zealand that—with ulterior
views—either with an eye to commerce, or with an
eye to emigration—he May chance to be in quest of.
If he care not, 111:n the Johnsonian philospher, to
take Eo wide a range of contemplation as that
involved in a arvey "from China to Pert:," he may
at any rate by the combination of these various
literary aids to his intellectual vision, as, by the
combination of the different lenses in the construc-
tion of a telescope, scan without much difficulty
the whole of that huge and distant colony of Neg