Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

446 AUSTRALASIA.Nevertheless, tiiiancial difficulties and conflicts with the government preventedthe complete realisation of this social scheme. The projects of other comjjauiesthat had scured concessions of extensive domains in the southern island provedmore successful. The province of Canterbury, so named by zealous Anglicansfrom the primatial see of England, was at once constituted under the direct spiritualand partly temporal control of the Anglican clergy, and was divided into parishesand " flocks." On the other hand the Scotch immigrants of the Free Kirk, whohad settled in the southern part of the same island, and who had given to theircapital the Gaelic name of Dunedin, synonymous of Edinburgh, also possessed theirreligious constitution intended to maintain them in a distinct community. Butthe discoveries which suddenly attracted thousands of gold-hunters to this rigidPresbyterian settlement soon broke up the narrow organisation of the youngcolonial churches, and New Zealand no longer differs from the other Britishcolonies in its social religious constitution. Sects of all denominations are now asnumerous as elsewhere.The majority, however, are still members of the AnglicanChurch.From the very first agriculture has been the chief industry of the colony.Sincethe first sale of public lands down to the end of March, 1888, planters and othershad acquired an extent of 11,500,000 acres at a total cost of £13,000,000, to a-verylarge extent secured by a limited number of capitalists.Seven proprietors possesseach over 100,000 acres, while two hundred and fifty-nine own domains each .exceeding 10,000 acres. The regions still available for tillage are at least asextensive as those already disposed of ;but the uplands, especially in South Island,can scarcely be utilised except for their forests and pasturage. North Island isthe more fertile of the two, thanks to its decomposed volcanic tuffas, and it alsoenjoys a milder climate ; hence in former times the Maori were concentratedchiefly in this region, which however is the smaller in extent ; and here also thesettlers have a far less extent of land at their disposal.The 33,400 farms which existed in 1887 in the archipelago were all under preciselythe same crops as those of Great Britain, the only perceptible difference beinga few fruit trees in North Island, where the fruits of Italy ripen side by side withthose of England. New Zealand is less favourably placed than Australia for stockbreeding;nevertheless, the livestock is already considerable, and wool is now exportedto the annual value of over £3,000,000.Meat-preserving is also a flourishing localindustry, and New Zealand has recently turned its attention to the preparation ofbutter for the home market.Both islands abound in minerals, although the gold mines alone have hithertobeen actively worked ; in 1887 nearly twelve thousand miners, of whom one-fourthwere Chinese, were engaged in extracting the precious metal from the quartzrocks and auriferous sands.Between 1857, when the gold-fields were discovered,and 1887 the tptal yield was over £44,000,000, and in the single year 1886, theproduce was no less than £28,000,000. The decrease in the exportation of goldwill probably be followed by greater activity in the coal mines, which already employover a thousand hands, with a total yearly output of more than 500,000