Historical Dictionary of New Zealand (3rd edition)

New Zealand or Aotearoa, “the land of the long white cloud”, sits alone in the Pacific Ocean nearly 1,000 miles to the east of Australia. With a unique but now sadly diluted flora and fauna, it was one of the last significant land masses to be inhabited by humans. The Maori peoples only arrived from about 1200 CE with the first European settlers not following until the early years of the nineteenth century. Today the population totals a little over four and a half million relatively thinly spread across slightly more than 100,000 square miles and famously outnumbered by sheep....