Beschreibung:

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Frederick Rice STACK. [ Views in the Province of Auckland, New Zealand. London: Day & Son, 1862 or later]. Broadsheets (59.7 x 45.5cm.). Letterpress dedication leaf to Sir George Grey, 4pp. descriptive text. Six hand-coloured lithographic plates by Day & Son after Stack. (Plates cut-down without loss and mounted, dedication and text mounted or window-mounted, some light soiling to mounts.) Modern cloth, original oatmeal paper wrappers mounted and bound-in (wrappers soiled). (ELLIS, 624-629) A RARE SERIES OF VIEWS OF AUCKLAND. The fine plates are titled 1. View of Auckland Harbour ... taken during the regatta of January 1862 (the race of the Maori war canoes ; 2. View of Auckland ... from the crater of Mount Eden ; 3. View of Auckland ... from the lake on the north shore ; 4. View of the Firth of the Thames, Waitemata, Tamaki, and Gulf of Hauraki, from the Howick Ranges ; 5. View of the Wairoa Creek (pheasant shooting on the estate of Alexander Kennedy..) on the road leading to the Wairoa Valley ; 6. View from the ranges, overlooking the entrance to the Manukau Harbour, Auckland. The text comprises both topographical descriptions and some comment on the social life of the colony: it includes some original comments from Stack ('Sir George Grey has lately purchased an island (the "Kawau") containing several thousand acres in the Gulf of Hauraki, about thirty miles from Auckland, and on it he intends turning loose the Red deer sent to him by the late Prince Consort'), but also lengthy passages extracted from William Swainson's New Zealand and its Colonization (London: 1859) ('the new arrival is not long in finding his true level; for in apprehension of character the people of New Zealand are marvellously clear-sighted - quick in detecting it, and just in its appreciation: no one can long pass for what he is not; and if not distinguished by some useful or agreeable quality, the new arrival soon finds his level in a modest insignificance.'). Hocken p.221.