?Miss Marjorie Appleton ranges all over the world to look at the series of events which changed the face of New Zealand and made it the land we know today.
Starting with a physical description of the country and the strange plant and animal forms which survive to this day, she goes on to tell how Polynesian explorers from the Society Islands discovered New Zealand in the tenth century A.D.; how Abel Tasman, seven hundred years later, searching for the mythical Southern Continent, sighted the west coast of New Zealand; and how, after yet another century and a quarter, James Cook sailed to the Pacific and explored New Zealand?s coast line.
The inhabitants of New Zealand are all, relatively speaking, newcomers there; and a large proportion of her animal and vegetable life is not indigenous. How and why did they arrive in New Zealand? That is the question which this book tries to answer.
The explanation is to be found largely outside New Zealand and in events that took place in distant lands.
Within a few years the secession of the British North American colonies led indirectly to the founding of a colony in New South Wales. British people were now within one thousand two hundred miles of New Zealand: but systematic colonisation might never have taken place if it had not been for the far-sighted genius of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. He evolved an original method of colonisation which was put into practice in the middle of the nineteenth century when wave after wave of colonists, direct from Britain, carried their way of life to the opposite quarter of the globe.
Miss Appleton tells an inspiring and exciting story, which is illustrated with contemporary prints and specially drawn maps.? ? from the dustwrapper.

Methuen & Co 1958 (ex-library)