Oh! Wonderland of the Southern Seas. Oh! Beauty Spot of the World Oh! Land whose glacier-crowned mountains pierce the fairest of Heavens—whose rivers rush over beds of crystal and gold—whose lakes, embosomed amid the lonely hills, shimmering in the sunshine, as it were vast sapphires in a setting of emerald, ruby, and amethyst—whose forests deep, dark, dense, are the home of a myriad birds that flit like living gems from bough to bough. Oh! Land of flaming sunlight and gloomy shadow, of calm and storm, of summer heats and wintry snows. Thou art so near and yet so far. -Robert P. Whitworth, "Proemia", Hine-Ra, or the Māori Scout: A Romance of the New Zealand War