door are opened, and the barrels are
examined. Two or three in that long row may
have burst, but the proportion of unsound
barrels is very small. Some that have given
way in the strangest manner are hung up
against the walls as curiosities. One has its
torn half doubled in two; one gapes with a
ragged wound; one is split into ribbons; and
one has its spiral strip unwound for a good
part of its length. It was badly welded.

In the centre of the establishment stands
the magazine, isolated and blank-looking. In
one apartment, three persons are handling
powder and balls—loading the barrels for
proof, with a charge many times greater than
they will have to carry. In another, an old
man is casting bullets—with his simmering
lead in the copper, and his ladle, and his
bullet moulds, and the bright rows of clean
balls he turns out of them. Elsewhere, we
see piles and faggots of musket barrels—
innumerable, rusty, and ugly at present—both
those that have undergone proof, and those
that are waiting for it. And again, we see
elsewhere the punching of the Government
mark on the proved barrels. It is a strange
and dismal sort of place, inhabited by civil
and intelligent people, who do their best to
make a stranger interested in this sidelong
peep at the horrors of war.

Government thinks it right to examine
bayonets too. Some military authorities say
that our great reliance, in regard to
self-defence at least, must be on the bayonet; and
others aver that no living soldier has seen two
lines of infantry come to close quarters with
bayonets, actually pushing and thrusting.
Both these accounts may be true, considering
how terror-striking a weapon the bayonet is,
and how much of modern warfare has been
vague explosion; sanguinary enough upon
occasion, but not always very much so, and
wholly different in character, and in its
requirements from the soldier, from the
hand-to-hand fighting of old times. It seems to be
supposed, by some qualified judges of our
case, that the increased precision of aim
conferred by modern rifle operations, will
necessitate a closer hand-to-hand fighting, as
sharp-shooters are not good at a close combat,
and are not fitted, either by training or the
arms they carry, to meet a charge; while the
greater their proficiency in their own style,
the more eager will their adversaries be to
stop their fire. However this may be,
and whatever attention it behoves us to
give to weapons which will be wanted in
places and situations in which rifles cannot be
used, it is clear that the British mind is at
present animated with a desire to overtake
the proficiency of foreign soldiery and colonial
savages in the use of the rifle; and the
tamest citizen cannot go through a
Birmingham gun-manufactory without a certain
thrill of the nerves, and animation of spirits,
which indicate that hearts will not be wanting to
the defence of the principles of liberty,
if there be but due and timely training of
hand and eye, under the guidance of military
discipline.

FROM A SETTLER'S WIFE.

AT last, after a weary voyage of four months
and fourteen days, the welcome sight of land
repaid us for all our troubles. We reached
Auckland, our destined home, the seat of
Government, and the capital of New Zealand,
on the 18th December.

Having had contrary winds almost from the
North Cape, and making way only by what
the sailors call a "long leg and a short one,"
a fair wind now sprang up within a mile of
the harbour. It was early morning, and the
commencement of a day such as only shines
upon the South Seas. We sailed into a
capacious basin, indented with numerous tiny
bays. The forelands jutting out on these were
clothed down to the water's edge with verdure.
On five of the bays, its wooden houses stretching
up gentle hills, the town of Auckland is
seated. Behind it rise Mount Eden and
Mount Albert, and in front, on the north shore,
are Mounts Victoria and Rangitoto.
Excellently situated, between two seas, possessing a
magnificent harbour, one could already descry
in its scarcely defined streets, in its half-erected
buildings, ever in progress, the childhood of
one of those princely commercial cities whose
names reach to the end of the earth. Even as
we entered, the harbour was studded with
ships,—American whalers, brigantines from
California, (with which country New Zealand
carries on a prosperous and increasing trade,)
merchantmen from Sydney and Hobart Town,
schooners from the south, several English
vessels, with the innumerable coasters, studded
the unruffled waters, which, twenty years ago,
were almost unknown to Europeans. Several
shore boats came out to meet us, gaily
decorated with flags in their sterns. We had, on
landing, but a damp reception. There is no
wharf, nothing but a jetty, thrown out by one
of the principal hotels. It was low water, and
we could not land at this, so we were obliged
to disembark at a reef, in which adventure I
nearly took seisin of my new country, as
William the Norman did of England, by
measuring my length upon it. Bands of Sappers
and Miners are now driving piles for a wharf,
and emigrants, next year, will have a drier
reception.* Going to one of the inns, we had
breakfast of pork chops, coffee, and other
delicacies, for eighteen-pence each. We then
sallied forth, and hired a small house, containing

* The coast of Waitmata Harbour, on the south side of
which Auckland is situated, is so shoal that merchant ships
are unable to approach the shore to within a convenient
distance. In the early history of the town (its antiquity
does not date further back than a dozen years) a cargo of
coals entered the harbour, and although the inhabitants of
Auckland were much in want of fuel, the collier was obliged
to sail away, from sheer inability to discharge her freight
in reasonable time. Without wharves and piers, therefore,
Auckland will never become the great city our correspondent
anticipates.