A CANADIAN'S IMPRESSION'S

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 131, 1 December 1906, Page 4

A CANADIAN'S IMPRESSION'S

NEW ZEALAND AND HER PEOPLE. (Lyttelton Times.) Mr T. H. Race, one of the Canadian Commissioners to the International Exhibition, is contributing to the St. Thomas Daily Times and other journals in Canada the impressions made upon him by this colony. He has been here four or five weeks. As that time includes one big race week, and as he has been in daily attendance at the Exhibition, he has had good opportunities of seeing New Zealanders at play-. •• Up to the present he has not been able to get into other districts of the colony, but he has made several trips into Canterbury, where he saw the kind of life people live in the country in this part of the world. The first letter he sent to his syndicate of newspapers dealt with the sea and incidents on the voyage. His second one deals with New Zealand. "It is a wonderful country," he says, "and just why it should be populated with less than a -million people would puzzle any observer, did he not get to understand the labour laws and conditions here. It it called the labouring man's paradise, but just what advantages he enjoys beyond the feeling that he is ccck-of-the-walk and can retard the progress o. the country by discouraging or even preventing immigration, I have not been able to see. That this country iB enjoying a wonderful prosperity is evidenced on every nana. It was not always so. Twelve years ago or thereabouts, the agricultural interests of this country were suffering. The golden egg, which subsequently proved such a source of wealth and prosperity to the land, had not then been discovered. Sheep were, at that time, being slaughtered by the thousand for their wool, skins and tallow/ and the carcases thrown away. Then came into use the freezing process, and frozen mutton became the golden egg which has made New Zealand prosperous and wealthy. Mr Race is surprised at the; large number of sheep he saw on the stations. He visited farms on which ten, twenty,: thirty and over forty thousand sheep are being a raised. "You may wonder how this great number of sheep are managed, ' he saysty his readers; "but it seems a much "easier task than managing a small farm in Canada, with a more certain profit at the, end of the year. In the first place, there is no winter here such as we are accustomed to in Canada. When the grass runs low in the winter season, the sheep are turned into the turnip ranges, every farmer having from one hundred to six hundred acres of turnip*,' according to the size of the farm and number of his flock. The sheep start with the tops and eat the

turnips right down to the root in the course of eight or ten weeks, when the grass will bavo begun to growagain. It is now shearing time, and this is the most interesting part of sl;eep farming. I have seen some machines at work which in the hands of an expert operator, will dispose of from 200 to 250 sheep a day. But the shearing is not all done with nmchines, aud what surprises me is that a man with a pair of ordinary shears will pass through his hands as many as 200 sheep a day. The best record is 230 for one man. I rf member when I was upon the farm 1 sheared 34 sheep one day and tlought I had done wonders. Here they do the thing by lightening srxed, even by hand. A flock of shoep will average about nine pounds of wool each, and the wool is selling a*; twenty-eight cents a pound. Lambs at six- months can be sold readily at live dollars a piece, and mutton at the freezers, a't^ from two to three years old, is bringing a good P'.ice. And there seems to me no end to the demand, for the slaughter at tbose freezers is going on at the late of thousands of sheep per day. I-. is a great business; and the sheep farmers here to-day are more like larons of tho olden time than mere tillers of the soil. They are all lordly husbandmen, who enjoy the life of " gentleman rather than that of an o.f'inary toiler." As to the agricultural shows, Mr li ace says: — "I was greatly interr.Nted' in the display of live stock nvftde at them. There are always sheop without end, and the variety attracted my attention, as much as the number. But notwithstanding the fact that sheep are the main sor rce of wealth here, the taste of i 'ii.* New Zealander runs to horses; lip&vy horses for use, fancy horses for pleasure and for sport. I have seen jmt as good heavy horses in Canada, tat not so many of them together of th< highest type. Canadian breeders_ send their best progeny to the Uir ted States. New Zealanders keep imirs for themselves. In lighter classes the saddle and the racehorse a».e very largely bred. At these annual shows all the farmers' sons and many of their daughters appear on horseback and the hurdle race is generally the greatest attraction of tit 9 show. In fact, I can safely say that all the hurdy-gurdies, fakes and side-shows at the annual Toronto Fair would not suffice to draw a New Zealand crowd away from the hurdle race, in which the sons and daughters of the neighbourhood are the participants. It strikes me that the people go to these shows more for fun cr recreation and social intercourse, ihfin for any educative features there may be about them. Of all the people that I ever met, the New Zealander takes life the easiest and enjoys it most. They are never on the rush. They go to work leisurely at jtftht o'clock in the morning, knock off for a cup of tea at ten o'clock, and always find time for another cup o«" tea in the afternoon. In fact, the ! Crftenioon tea is as much a fixed event in their everyday life as the breakfast or dinner. You are often asked in for afternoon tea, and if you should drop in by chance, you are al- J vays asked if you have had # after- j r con tea. The worst quality, in fact that I have found in the New Zealander is his hospitality. To me it is too killing, and if I ever get safely back to Canada it will be owing to my strategy in escaping the after-' roon tea and evading the evening •ut to dinner. " And then the New Zealander is the greatest spender I ever saw. The weil-to-do makes his money easy ; the labourer and the servant maid get food wages, and the money flies from both as easily and as freely as those skimming winds from the sea that aie ever searching my bones down 1 pie. One of the first things that I n< ticed hero was the splendidlystocked stores and shops, and that ub rut every third store was a jewellory and fancy goods shop. The prices charged by all these stores are j learfully high compared with prices ; in Canada, and how they existed, ! and continued to exist, with a populotion so comparatively small was a ptazle to me. Yet everybody seemed to have money to spend, and they spend it as if it were a religious duty. "This ease with which the New Zealander will part with his money was never more clearly demonstrated to me than during the great race week here at the beginning of the month. The great race week is an ; annual event, and the event of the j year in New Zealand. Everybody j £f>ps— well, nearly everybody — the > parson's wife or daughter to represent him for appearance sake ; and everybody's sovereigns go into the machine on some horse, and the Government of the land takes 10 per cent, of tbe money as a sure thing, no matter who else wins or loses. Our servant maid asked . for her wages on the morning of the opening, and went with the rich; rich and poor, high and lowly, the cultured aiid the vulgar — everybody. All paid ten shillings to get in, the rich fifty to a hundred shillings more to the grand parade or dress circle, while the hi.mbler citizen kept to the common ground. But all had access to the gambling machines, and everybody's sovereign went in — nothing less than a pound. The following morning I asked the maid if she made a fortune, and she quite unconcernedly replied that she only lost seventeen shillings ; three shillings had in some way come back to her out of her pound. And she repeated the thing next day by proxy, having left all her money with somebody to stake for her. If any servant girl in Canada lost that much money in one day she would weep all night over it, but here it nevor seems to cost them a thought. — " Well, tbp Exhibition opened on November Ist, and is now under full way. Canada is well to the front, and is likely to keep there. But I must tell you about the opening of the Exhibition and Canada's share in it in my next letter. It is now f;ear?y the middle of November, the spring time is about past and the summer is close upon us. How I pity you just now as you will be reading this letter with the cold winter winds howling across the frozen or snowy-covered earth. Canada has her drawbacks, 'tis true ; but with all her faults I love her as I love no other land."