VISITORS FROM FRANCE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 96, 21 April 1909, Page 5

VISITORS FROM FRANCE.

EXPECTED TO SEE CANNIBALS

"YOU ARE TOO CIVILISED."

THE WORKING OF PRO-

HIBITION

[from our correspondent.] CHRISTCHURCH, April 20. Two world-wide " voyageurs who are at present staying m Christchurch were interviewed by a Lytteiton Times reporter. They are M. St. Dyktor, a representative ot die French journal L'lllustratioii, and Dr. Kopf, occulist, writer and traveller.' They gave a most interesting account of their travels, and also some illuminative impressions of the Dominion, in which, up to the present, they have spent seventeen days of their existence. Coming from the civilisation of Paris and the rest of Europe, it is'hardly surprising that they should court experiences the opposite-of those that they have found in older lands, and there was almost a note of chagrin in their voices as they agreed that in New Zealand the people and the conditions were so exceedingly "up-to-date" as to be advanced almost beyond belief. 'You are too civilised, too cultured; we can find no adventures here of the "kind our friends dreaded for us -vhen we said we, were coming to New Zealand," they reiterated. M. St. Dyktor said, laughingly, that he had been told that he would find oarini"bals in some parts of the country, and from the comfortable haven of an easy chair in an up-to-date hptel he had sent home some ferocious Maori photos that were calculated to drive his sisters and his cousins and his aunts to a frenzy of apprehension. He has brought his camera, and is busy taking pictures to send to his paper, L'lllustration; but lie is afraid that he is not going to find any cannibals. It appears that that idea has been fostered lately amongst French people by a "fake" cinematograph picture, showing a cannibalistic orgy purporting to have been taken at a corroboree of the blacks in Australia.

Dr. Kopf and M. St. Dyktbr came to Australia first, and are now working their way northwards from the Bluff to Auckland. They were amazed at the comfort of the workmen's homes in New Zealand, and at the fact that a man earning his £vB a week had in many cases been able to buy for himself a snug little tproperty. "It is wonderful," they said. "We think the working-man is we'll off, well-to-do; but there is one tiling —he does not get enough amusement. In France of an evening there are the cafes, where they meet and talk and pla37 games; here there is nothing. :The hotels close at 10 o'clock, and then out everybody goes, and in the towns where there is prohibition, wliy it is duller than ever!"

Dr. Kopf gave an amusing account of having asked for a glass of beer in an hotel in Invercargill. " I was very thirsty, and I did ask for a glass of* beer. They laughed at me. I could not see the joke. I did see lots of men going about the streets; they were tipsy, and some were drinking whisky out of bottles. I did ask the landlord ' Why can I not get a glass of beer?' A man heard

me, and he went to a box with his own key and did take out half a bottle of whisky and put it into my "hands. 'Here, drink this,' he said. Fancy! I could not get a glass of beer by paying for it, but I could get half a bottle of whisky for nothing. In all the prohibition towns that we have been in we have seen more drunkenness than anywhere .else."