The forest was here almost composed of the kauri; and the
largest trees, from the parallelism of their sides, stood up like
gigantic columns of wood. The timber of the kauri is the most
valuable production of the island; moreover, a quantity of resin
oozes from the bark, which is sold at a penny a pound to the
Americans, but its use was then unknown. Some of the New Zealand
forests must be impenetrable to an extraordinary degree. Mr.
Matthews informed me that one forest only thirty-four miles in
width, and separating two inhabited districts, had only lately, for
the first time, been crossed. He and another missionary, each with
a party of about fifty men, undertook to open a road, but it cost
them more than a fortnight's labour! In the woods I saw very few
birds. With regard to animals, it is a most remarkable fact, that
so large an island, extending over more than 700 miles in latitude,
and in many parts ninety broad, with varied stations, a fine
climate, and land of all heights, from 14,000 feet downwards, with
the exception of a small rat, did not possess one indigenous
animal. The several species of that gigantic genus of birds, the
Deinornis, seem here to have replaced mammiferous quadrupeds, in
the same manner as the reptiles still do at the Galapagos
Archipelago.
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