Despite its faraway location, more than a million visitors each year are drawn to New Zealand. That's because it is also one the most beautiful nations in the world. Two main islands make up almost all of New Zealand. The two islands together, along with smaller islands, are about 1,000 miles long, but only 300 miles wide at their widest points. Beautiful, mountainous South Island contains an amazing park called Fjordland National Park .
Fjords are deep, narrow sea bays carved out of mountains by glaciers, or slow-moving rivers of ice.
New Zealand also contains the smaller North Island, where most of New Zealand's people live in cities like Wellington, the national capital, and Auckland, the nation's largest city. New Zealand was first settled by people called Maori , who arrived in canoes sometime before A.D. 900. The first Europeans to come to New Zealand were the Dutch, who sailed there in the early seventeenth century. Settlers moved onto Maori lands, sometimes violating treaties or cheating the original landholders. For several decades, the European settlers and the Maoris who had lived there for a long time warred over the land.