MACAUIAY'S NEW ZEALANDER

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 30, 4 August 1909, Page 6

MACAUIAY'S NEW ZEALANDER

Time, which puts wrinkles on the granite brow of the mountain, is scoring changes in the faces of the New Zea-land-born, but it is not inferred that the New Zealander is hard-faced. The older inhabitants — and oven the younger ones who gaze at the shiploads of new arrivals from Great Britain — are realising that the offspring of the transplanted stock is changing perceptibly in type, physical and mental. When men change their skies, the skies change them. It is very obvious that the New Zealander, with climate, environment, conditions of lifo and local colour all different from tho Briton's must himself differ from tho Briton. The change, to which Sir Robert Stout referred in England recently, is readily granted ; the chief interest lies in the assessment of the present degrees of difference in physique and temperament, and the rate of divergence between the people here and their ancesI tors of England, Ireland, and Scotland. The face of the average New Zealand man, reared in his own country, differs from the face of the average man raised in Britain, for two reasons, chiefly, and the first of them is the thorough mixture of the three races here. In Christchurch English may still exclusively marry English, and in Dunedin Scotch may exclusively marry Scotch, but even the English and Scotch born in those two cities are readily distinguishable from the English and Scotch of tho British Isles. In general, however, the three nations are blended ; thousands of young New Zealanders have English, Irish, and Scotch blood in their veins, and perhaps a tincture of Welsh, as well. Typical English, Irish, or Scotch faces among the New Zealand-born are becoming steadily rarer, and Continental infusions will gradually help to further submerge the individuality of the parent races. The second reason is the different course of living, assisted by climate. The average New Zealander has camped out tinder tho stars, or even colder things, such as dripping trees ; he has moved much up and down country ; he has tried his hands or brains, or both, at more than one occupation. He does not usually wear a* groove for himself so deep as to block out all vision of the outside world. He stands square to the sun, the wind, and the rain, with a horizon 13,000 miles wide. The life hero develops an alertness, a quickness of the eye, and puts a koenness into the face. Yet the New Zealander clings, in a way, to many conventions of the Old Countries. From some viewpoints, New Zealand is still a moon to the English sun, glimmering in borrowed radiance. Plum-pudding in the height of summer is only one of New Zealand';-* methods of imitating England, and there are .many others. Lamblon-quay keeps its eye on Jioud-sU-ect, fcwrt tmtui'ttjly

eiiouga. It was only yesterday that the pioneers came here, as human history goes. The settlers — and even their descendants — have hardly had time to think that they are in a strange land : the Old Country is still Home. This is only 1909 ; half a century ago Maori pas were on the foreshore o£ Port Nicholson, and the tui and the mako-mako sang in the adjacent bush. But 1959? 2009? Sir Robert Stout's mind (shown on another page of this issue) went away ahead to the visionary day of "Macaulay's New Zealander" ; but in Sir Robert's view, "Macaulay's New Zealander" will not spend his time "sitting on a broken bridge." He will bebusy at the mending ; his energy of mind aucl. body will compel him. to action. By that time New Zealand will have developed a national literature, a poesy inspired by the mountains and the rivers that gnaw upon them, and by the ideals that must come to a people in a land where Nature is kind — but not too kind. Sir Robert's opinion, too, is that New Zealanders themselves will be differentiated ; the southerners, he says, will be more sturdy than the northerners of the milder areas, but that development, depends, as we have explained, on whether the New Zealanders will become more attached to special localities than they are at present. The inhabitants now are travellers, by instinct. Families nmy remain for a generation in one settlement, but there has been a great moving up and down, f»ven with only carts, horses, trains, and steamers to do the transporting. And the aeroplane and the airship are said to be coming ! In fact they have come already in the vision of the sober South. Sir Robert Stout looks forward to "a grander and a better race than the world has ever seen." The material is here and the laboratory ; will the experiments be right? Plant, soil, and air are all here, but a bad gardener can m«fcke a vronderful failure even with a hardy cabbage, no matter how soil and climate may work for him. The gardening has to be maintained ala high standard; things set in the ph?de here can htraggie up just as poorly as in the shady places of older lands ; the child of a New Zealand city slum — there are not many — can be just as defective in body and mind as the child oi" a British slum. The authorities have to be on guard against the .mistakes and the apathy that Have maimed much of the population in the Old World. The trek from the country to the towns has to be reasonably arrested if Sir Robert Stout's hope is to be fulfilled.