PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION
This book owes its existence to the suggestion, advice, and moral and intellectual support of Mr. C. P. Lucas, C.B., Assistant Under-Secretary for the Colonies and author of the previous volumes in the series. I also owe obligations to the authorities of the British Museum Library, whom I have incessantly troubled, of the Colonial Office Library — especially Mr. W. Scott—and of the Record Office, the contents of which are only available down to 1830. Mr. H. E. Dale and Mr. C. T. Davis — both of the Colonial Office — gave me useful information with regard to certain matters in chapter xv; and I tender them my thanks.
In entering into somewhat minute details I cannot have failed to make mistakes which I should be glad to know of : and by mistakes I do not mean misprints or mis-spellings, of which there may be one or two. Indeed one misprint — 1585 for 1595 on p. 5, 1. 18— caught my eye just too late for correction; I am still not quite sure how to spell Manihiki, Urewera, Pango Pango, or Malmesbury; and I am puzzled whether to write Cook Islands or Cook's Islands. Nor do I mean by mistakes omissions. A book of equal or greater length might easily be made out of what I have omitted to relate, although it may be doubted whether it would be a book on Historical Geography. I have omitted or translated the curious Australian slang which grew up eighty years ago — such as ' expiree ' emancipist/ ' cornstalk/ ' currency/ and ' advance Australia ' ; nor will my readers be vexed with the three meanings of ' papa ' in the Pacific. Military and personal details have been discarded as irrelevant; and I have abstained from expressing any opinion on the tendency towards imperial and colonial union