Under the above title a smartly bound book of some hundred pages has issued from the London Press. It purports to be an account of a spring spent in this settle ment, in 1851, and is the production of a Mr. Adams, who undertook a voyage to New Zealand for the benefit of his health, and arrived by the " Canterbury" in Octo ber of that year. As people generallylike to know what strangers think of them and their proceedings, we will extract for our readers' gratification a few passages from the work, it having been kindly placed in our hands for a few hours. ■- After a somewhat prosy description of the voyage, in nowise different from some thousand similar ones, the author thus announces his approach to the promised land : — "It was on a magnificent spring morning I that we rounded Banks' Peninsula. After a. weary four months' voyage, with no relief to the undying monotony of sea and sky, the country we were now passing seemed like a scene from fairyland. Richly wooded hills presenting an endless variety of form and colouring—lovely bays running deep into the shore, and sheltered from every wind (?), —rich pictures dotted with ! sheep and cuttle, —canoes and iishing boats gliding along the shore, —whilst the bright sun poured its rich flood of light over wood, and hill, and valley, and lighted up the deep blue sea with myriads of glittering stars, which danced and sparkled with every motion of our majestic ship. Slowly the vessel glided on be fore the gentle breeze that scarcely filled her canvass, and the sun was setting as we ncared the month of the harbour. On our left lay the richly wooded Peninsula, the scenery o? which resembles in many respects that of the back of the Isle of Wight, but on a larger and grander scale ; on our right were the Canterbury Plains, extending to the hilly region which stretched far away beyond the snow-capped Kaikoras, to the distant mountains of the Northern Island."' Our author arrived in the very thick of what our readers may remember as the "Midlothian panic:" when, appalled by the severity of a " sou-wester," and other.
