Position and Size. New Zealand lies 1200 miles southeast of Australia. It is at the antipodes of Spain and is thus somewhat closer than the British Isles to the Equator. It comprises two large islands: the North Island (43,131 sq. miles) and the South Island (58,120 sq. miles); and a number of smaller ones distributed round their coasts. Of these the bleak, infertile, and hence unimportant Stewart Island is the largest. The total area of New Zealand is slightly less than that of the British Isles, while the South Island is almost exactly the size of England and Wales. The greatest length of the group is 1000 miles, the greatest breadth 180 miles.

Build and Relief. The main islands of New Zealand have the shape of a riding boot, with a break just above the ankle forming Cook Strait. The North Island is the foot, and the South Island the leg. The long, low Auckland Peninsula is the toe, the underpart of the instep being the Bay of Plenty, and the hollow above the heel Hawke's Bay. On the whole the islands are mountainous. In the extreme southwest there is a worn mass of old fold mountains whose grain runs northwest and southeast. Farther north young fold mountains known as the Southern Alps form a backbone to the South Island. The peaks of this range rise to 10,000 and 12,000 feet above the sea, Mount Cook being the highest (12,500 feet), and their upper slopes are snow-clad and streaked with glaciers. In the tertiary period the mountains were higher than they are now and, owing to this and to the colder climate at that time, vast glaciers covered the slopes. When the climate became milder, the torrents proceeding from the melting snow and ice swept vast quantities of rock waste on to the lower ground to build up the Canterbury Plains and the Otago lowlands, areas which to-day are among the most fertile in New Zealand. These broad lowlands on the east give the South Island an asymmetrical shape, since on the west there is only a narrow coastal strip forming the province of Westland.

In the North Island there is also a line of mountains running in a northeasterly direction, continuing the Kaikoura Mountains of the South Island.