AS OTHERS SEE US

Bruce Herald, Volume XI, Issue 1080, 21 January 1879, Page 5

AS OTHERS SEE US

A Cbicagoan, says an Aateiom conr«mpor.tiy, wlio his recently re -u rued from Austiatia and New Zealand, says of tl.e latter country : — '• .New Zt*a!and is a wonderlaud. As you S'til towards it there rises before yon a b ack, and an all appearance unbroken wall of Htone. Jt is a volcanic islaud, and the coast is v.-ry rouyh and dangerous. Yet Auckland has the most beautiful harbour my eyes ever rested upon. The vegetation is very strange and beautiful. I have seen fern trees twenty and t.wenty-five feet high, with mngnificent fionds. The fern growth is marvbloußly luxuriant. 1 here are about 1 50 varieties, and some of them the oldest shape imaginable. One kind, with a very delicate lavender leaf, is singularly hands .me. There seems to be no bottom to the soil, either of the island or the continent I have seen soil -black muck soil —twenty feet deep, and they have told me that up the country were many immense downs where twenty-five feet was the average. It is impossible to over calculate the productive capacity of such ground act that. The great drawback to agriculture is the recurrence of a yearly drought. They are beginning to overcome th is by means of artesian wel s and the diversion of water-courses. It is a strange and^nysome respects a weird land. The gum trees' give a queer and creepy aspect to every wood scene. • Their limbs aie gnarled and twiated in a way you cannot dissociate from an idea of pain ; foliage' is scant, and the white bark stared through it like bare arms. The birds are nearly all songless though they have the most brilliant plumage. Most: of i hem »re quiet all day] but, as SDon as hiiiht falls the woods are ringing with their harsh, discordant crhß.iu fiot, the continent is in many respects what you might call a looking glass country —fur everything seems to be reversed in it.

The north is warm, the south is cold ; day is quiet, and night is full of life ; the yegetattun smallest here is largest there, and they have a bird without wings, and four, footed . animals with beaks. But the humans are right end up and wide-awake and unless I'm much mistaken they will make a country of it tbat the world will stand amaaed at." The foregoing seeml rather mixed. The writer baa evidently travelled in both Australia and Neir Zealand, and has confused the distinctive features of both in a manner highly «uggestive of an overdose of " gin-sling."