[TITLE PAGE]
[Image of page iii]
BY JOHN CARNE BIDWILL ,
(LATE OF EXETER,)
SIDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY W. S. ORR & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW;
AND J. FITZE, EXETER.
MDCCCXLI.
(
Price 2
s. 6
d.)
[TITLE VERSO]
[Image of page iv]
REPRINT PUBLISHED BY
CAPPER PRESS
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND
1974
Printed offset by The Caxton Press, Christchurch
from the copy in the Auckland Institute and Museum Library
[DEDICATION]
[Image of page v]
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
THE EARL OF DEVON.
To your Lordship, as Governor of the Plymouth New Zealand Company, I beg most respectfully to inscribe the following pages, not with any idea that they will confer honour on your Lordship, but that your Lordship's public and private character may obtain for them a favourable introduction. I venture to believe they will add something to the little stock of information respecting the rising and important Colony of New Zealand, and on this ground alone, I trust, be not unworthy of your Lordship's notice.
I have the honour to subscribe myself, most respectfully,
Your Lordship's
Most obedient and very humble Servant,
JOHN C. BIDWILL.
June, 1841.
[Page vi is blank.]
[PREFACE]
[Image of page vii]
PREFACE.
IT is a very common practice among book-makers of the present day, to entertain their readers with a preface, setting forth with coquettish diffidence, not the merits, but the demerits of their productions. If they believed their own professions, and their diffidence were anything but feigned, it is obvious they would never have entered the list of authors, and
"done their best To make as much waste-paper as the rest."
It is not my intention to follow their example; but in order to secure my readers as much as possible against the chances of disappointment, I at once assure them most frankly, that the following pages have no pretension to literary fame, but were hastily thrown together during my rambles, and have since been deprived (by my arduous occupation as a merchant in Sidney) of whatever improvement a careful revision might have enabled me to effect.
[Image of page viii]
The only claim therefore I have on the attention of my readers, is founded on a desire to add something to the little stock of information respecting New Zealand, which, amidst the general interest emigration has excited in England, obtains no ordinary share of consideration. Divested of the usual traveller's licence, fidelity in narrative and attentive observation may safely be depended on: and I have some confidence, having wandered farther in this colony than any other European who has communicated his information to the public, that no one will rise from the perusal of this pamphlet dissatisfied with the trifling amount of money and time it may have cost him.
J. C. BIDWILL.
Sidney, August 25th, 1840.
