"GLOBE-TROTTING IN NEW ZEALAND."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9022, 29 October 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

"GLOBE-TROTTING IN NEW ZEALAND."

Last summer the Countess of Galloway, who is the sister of the Marquis of Salisbury, paid a visit to New Zealand in company with the Countess of Jersey, and under the escort of Lord and Lady Onslow, went over a considerable part of the colony. Lady Galloway has written an account of her tour, under the above title, which appears in the September issue of the " Nineteenth Century." Lady Calloway commences by a brief defence of globe-trotting, although she admits that the globetrotter must beware of drawing general conclusions from his own experience, which is necessarily very limited. Referring to the principal cities of the colony, Lady Galloway says : — But of all the chief towns of New Zealand, Auckland has by far the best situation. The lovely harbour, with its numerous smiling islands, is certainly one of the finest of all the magnificent harbours of the southern hemispere, and its charms so absorb the visitor that the town, which covers a good deal of ground, hardly receives its fair share of attention. Lady Calloway visited the Sounds of the West Coast in the Hinemoa, and gives an excellent description of them. We quote a passage : — This land-locked water, which lies still and calm, overshadowed by the hills, is so deep throughout that our ship was frequently made fast to the trunk of a tree, on shore. The mountains often rise quite abruptly from the water, and are covered with luxuriant vegetation. Against the grey stone above, the eye catches the crimson glow of the redflowering rata; below is a wilderness of green creepers and mosses, while the soreading fronds of the tall tree-ferns stand out brighter and more conspicuous than the evergreen and non-deciduous trees and bushes around. We were travelling in the mouth of February, which is late in the antipodean summer; but there is no season of the falling leaf in the New Zealand forests, and trees called by the settlers native beech and birch, belong to pine tribes unfamiliar to us in the Northern hemisphere. The ridges of mountains which surround and beautify these arms of the sea, form an impenetrable barrier between them and the rest of the island. There is no resting place for the foot of man in the steep thickets overspreading them, and only two discovered passes give access to the lake district on the other side. All is absolute solitude and silence, save where here and there a cascade breaks over the precipices in silver _ threads, or volumes of water roar with their never-ending rush into caverns of rock below. No four-footed animals exist here; and during the nine days that re were steaming about, the only vestige of human life was one deserted hutusually the abode of a solitary man, whose food-supplies are brought once in six months by the Hinemoa, and who appears alternately to assume the character of a hermit and a mineralogist. The most remarkable of the birds of Now Zealand are described. Lady Galloway does not lecture us in respect of anything, as do most globe-trotters. She does not tell us that we have made a huge blunder by incurring so much debt, that we are rather rude in our manner, and unfortunate in our choice of political rulers. She does not even say that our railways are badly constructed, and run at a miserably slow pace. All these things we know, but every globe-trotter who comes to New Zealand considers it his duty to enforce the k-s«on over again, and we are becoming rather irritated under the infliction. We can bear it with equanimity when one who lias merely run through the country makes a number of statements vvhich are not true. But when tho globe-trotter insists on reminding us of our follies, then we get annoyed. Lady Galloway abstains from this kind of thing. She has sec down what she lias seen, fully appreciating all the romantic beauty of our scenery, and the capacities of the colony for commerce and agriculture.