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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 71

New Zealand's Extent and Position

page 5

New Zealand's Extent and Position.

At any rate, I must, before resuming my narrative, utter a few words of description on the subject of my discourse. The Colony of New Zealand possesses an area of about 104,000 square miles, and is therefore a little less in extent than Great Britain and Ireland. The length of the three Islands, including the narrow straits that divide them, is about 1,100 miles, nearly due north and south, the breadth is from 46 to 250 miles, with an average of about 140 miles, but no part is anywhere more than 75 miles from the sea. Attached to New Zealand as dependencies are several groups of islands. They are some hundreds of miles distant, in different directions, but their total extent is insignificant. There is no great area of land north of New Zealand until North Asia or North America, somewhere about Behring's Straits, is reached. No land worth mentioning to the east until South America is gained, and it is impossible to say how far the Antarctic Continent (if there is one) lies to the south. The nearest continent is Australia to the west about 1,000 miles distant. There is thus no civilised country of any extent so isolated as New Zealand, and the fact of this isolation has had a great influence, and will probably have a much greater one in the future on the character and modes of thought of the Colonists. The obvious effect is to inculcate self-reliance, and a disposition to determine what they consider best for themselves without much deference to the opinions of the peoples whose countries are divided from their neighbours by narrow water-ways or arbitrary lines.