AMERICA ON NEW ZEALAND

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3581, 30 December 1926, Page 4

AMERICA ON NEW ZEALAND

NO ESCAPED CONVICTS

From an American paper. —New Zealand, contrary to the general opinion of it: in the minds-pf the rest of the world, is neither cannibal infested nor inhabited by escaped (onviets.

It is a large group of islands, ranging all the way in climate, tempered by breezes of the South Pole, which is similar to our own. The white inhabitants differ from those of our own land chiefly in the fact that they live as one great family, although there are a million and <■ half of them. No matter where one goes in New Zealand, one finds relatives and friends of the people one has met elsewhere in New Zealand. They are always anxious to meet and look out for anybody recommended to them by the most distant of friends or relatives.

The four large cities of New Zealand are much . alike. There is Auckland, a city of 133,000; Christchurch, 92,000; Wellington, 95,000; Dunedin, 68,000. And unless one were told the names one would scarcely realize any difference in them. The people, the streets and the life that goes on in them are almost identical. New Zealanders have a strange habit of using their main streets for almost any purpose. The thoroughfares are passageways and shopping places. What is even stranger than that is the fac-t that they are used as living rooms. Every evening, when the business traffic of the day has cleared away and the dinner dishes have been put away, New Zealanders come forth to promenade the streets. Husbands, wives and children, arm in awn, walk back and forth, back and forth,-for hours. The great parade passes and repasses. There is a great abundance of harmless flirtation going on at all fiines. It consists chiefly iy the innocuous bandying of words. ' Four young girls, walking arm in arm, will pass four boys walking, abreast. There will lie an exchange of greetings, a remark will be tossed back over the shoulder and they will pass on.