PREFACE

Two Americans in New Zealand

My greatest trouble is going to be to avoid getting a reputation of being a Munchausen by simply telling the truth about you.

American writer Henry Demarest Lloyd, on visiting New Zealand, 1899

F ROM BOSTON TO DUNEDIN we were twenty-two hours in the air. The total distance, going and coming, exceeded the circumference of the earth. The change of time zones was seventeen hoursmore than to any other nation. By every measure, it was a long trip.

It was also a great adventure. Our travels began in 1994, with an invitation from Raewyn Dalziel to talk in Auckland about my book Albions Seed . Other invitations followed from universities in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, and Hamilton. We had never been to New Zealand and leaped at the opportunity. Between events we rented cars, visited every region within reach (all but Southland and Nelson), and met many New Zealanders. The result was a journey of about a month, through much of the country.

The following year brought more extended appointments at Otago University on the South Island and Waikato University in the North. My wife is a biologist and botanist, and I am an historian. We botanized and historicized together on both islands. To explore a country for the first time is not only to discover a new place. It is also to see ones own country and the world itself in a new light. The result is this book.

For many visitors, the strongest impression of New Zealand is the beauty of the place. To travel widely through the country is also to discover that it is beautiful in many ways. We were deeply interested in the diversity of its regions and the complexity of its history.

People think of New Zealand as a small nation. Its population of four million people compares with more than three hundred million in the United States. Its area seems very small by contrast with Australia, Canada, and the United Statesall of continental dimensions. On a world map, New Zealand appears even smaller in the great Pacific spaces that surround it.

But travelers on the ground are quickly disabused of these distant impressions. From the tip of North Cape to the bottom of Stewart Island, New Zealand spans more than a thousand miles, or thirteen degrees of latitude. Its area is larger than Great Britain, and only a little smaller than Japan. In American terms, New Zealand is the same size as the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, from midcoast Maine to central Florida. It has a similar range of climates, but in reverse. New Zealand is said to have a North without a winter and a South without a summer. The region called Northland is subtropical. Citrus fruits grow there, and flowers bloom through the year. In the far South, winter days can be bitter cold. On our first July night in Otago, the southern mountains were colder than Antarctica.