THE CORDIAL COUNTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15930, 29 May 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE CORDIAL COUNTRY.

BT FRANK MORTON.

Whenever it remembers, Wellington is a deliberately cheery town: now aid anon when holiday calls, Christchurch vaires up and winks gaily; Auckland is most of tho timo as genial as a long hopeless creditor just squared; New Plymouth, Wanganui, and Napier arc most happy and hospitable. Still, the fact stands that if you would fain make sure of good-fellowship in New Zealand it is always safest to go into the rural parts. Even in Otago Centra! you may find braw Scots who will look up from their curling with twinkling eyes to keep their shiny red noses company. Many fat landlords in Canterbury aro perfectly friendly on their native heath. The hospitality of the Kin; Country catches you by the heel and swings you round till you see multitude of stars, and causes you to harbour a fear that you will never again have acquaintance with stolid people .-Hid the solid land. And as for the YVaikato—why, bless you, the sort of folks you want to meet will do anything for you in the Waikato. Motoring one night from Matamata to Morrinsville I met the king of ail brotherly and unthinking chauffeurs. The distance (pardon if I misjudge) is about twenty miles, and the night was dark as the heart of the heathen stockbroker. The chauffeur reckoned he couldn't do it under the hour. And then we started. Now I love speed, and exult in it; but when I'm hanging hard on to an autoyrobile with my teeth and claws I don't especially care to combine travel with hurdle-racing. Pretty soon I began to think that this was too much excitement. We seemed to be leaping woods and flying lobsided over haystacks. Far beneath me, as pale-faced I leaned over the edge, I could see rabbits scurrying in multitudes as the headlight hit them— scurrying like women set amid a landscape with a visible small mouse. I gripped my agent by the hair and neck and leaned over to the genial lunatio at the wheel. "Are all the roads like this?' 1 I wanted to know. He blessed me heartily as he remarked that this was not the road; he said the road was pretty bad, so he'd taken a bush track. I dug the lop branch of sapling pine out of my eve «and asked if we had far to go now. Jehu (modern style: 'he who drove the horses of the wind) bade me note that we were just about starting. I had never aeroplaned before, and when I got used to it it was rather fine. In fiftvsix minutes we drew up at the hotel in Morrinsville, and the chauffeur said he'd had to take it easv. and he hoped we didn't. mind. We didn't. Honestlv we didn't. Wo should have hated it" had that cordial fellow allowed his enthusiasm to induce him to rush things at all. He was a great talker. As we bounced and sped he told us all the gossip of the countryside and all tho delightsome fiction that on the spur of the moment he could chuck in for jagniappe. There was. I remember, a wonderful tale of a vather slow train that leaves Thames, or Paeroa in the stilly night. He called that train the Nidhtbird, or the Night Owl. or some old namo like that. He said it was so slow that the stoker had been known to dismount and pick mushrooms between 5 the '.wheels as' they rushed dizzily . along. He said c that farmers along that line,dared.not grow wheat, because if they diet the passengers of the -Night Owl got scurvily off [ the ' train and 'devoured the growing corn. He told a truly ..pathetic story, of one woman with a young baby • who milked every cow aloiijjr the line last February and so saved th§ infant alive, .so that when the train leached _ Morrinsville the infant had blossomed into an elderly fat widow with five subordinate families.

The Tural man strays from the truth sometimes because it is the only tiling he has at hand to stray from: but ho is a cheerful and inveterate talker- Ho will keep you feeding so long as there is anything edible in the house, and when all tho store of food is spent lie will ask you every four minutes to give it a name. Peeroa is a place irpart, of course ; to Paeroa none of these rules apply. I met » man in Paeroa who had been a widower fourteen year.) and was still ignorant of the fact that Irs wife was dead. He was not an unfeeling man : it was simply that he hadn't noticed it. When I talk of the rural parts T'lim thinking of places whoso inhabitants do notice things at least us often as once a month. Take Ngaruawahia. I am one of the few newspapermen on earth who can spell Ngaruawahia without hesitation, and I am prouder of that than of anything. At Ngaruawahia they are as genial as anything. They take down their shutters before nine in the morning, and for an excitement they watch the sober long; trains dawdle by. They are orthodox without hysteria, patriotic without fuss. They sing " Rule, Britannia" whenever opportunity serves; si what matters it if they don't know much about tho war?

I suppose that, the cordial plow of the rural districts of New Zealand is largely due to the fact that, you can set plenty of things quite good to eat there. Tn Australia it is different. There is nothing genuinely edible a hundred miles out of the cities or twentv mile's bark from a railway. Tn the cities folks dine, in th) provincial towns they eat, in the country they bolt their grub. Things verv common in New Zealand are luxuries almost unattainable in Australia. Wo had a record crop of mushrooms in New Zealand this year: but in Australia mushrooms were hard to get. and for such as reached the market a truly frightful pric? was demanded. Thousands of tons of mushrooms rotted on their stems it New Zealand, and there would have hern an eager market for every one of them in New South Wales. ' A great waste, or that's how it, strikes an uncommercial traveller. Mushrooms are the, food of good nature. At no other ; me are our nitalists so hearty and kind and spry as thev are in the mushroom season. I suppose that mushrooms are as trulv the food of lore as music ever was. J have known a man sup on mushrooms -.vet with whisky and then sing all night. Possibly mushrooms are intoxicating. 'I hey do make a very ardent spirit from the' fly agaric in China. The matter needs to be innuired into without further dfiiv. Possibly mushrooms should be prohibited. Experience is a great, teacher, and T have seen wonderful things of' late. I know a golfer who nevr uses bad language. T could name half a, do/en publ ; - rans who are obstinate teetotallers. I have discovered a pretty newspaperwomana ran avis so unexpected as still to Bpei'i incredible. T have juggled with "Id mountains and kissed the eyes of night- I have spent two hours on end in a wild tumble of surf, and not felt chilly. I have been staggered by an amateur angler who understated the weight of his catch. I have spent three davs with an American who speaks English. I tell you, one never knows what i« coming to ote. and there is nothing elsi so stupid as * dull despair. T offer you a hi»t. If you want to find mit fo>- yourself how cordial a country New Zealand is ro first of pV to Hamilton. hen pa«s hv way of Minamata, and Morrinsville (sedulously avoiding Paeroa) to Thames, and tell the venerable over-whiskered Thamesers that vou don't believe in mining speculation. Then jumn straight to Te Kuiti a"d stay there a fortnight, motoring to Waitomo and Tropin whenever the weather permits. Thence to Taihane and Waneanui; and so hr way of New Plymouth back to Auckland.' That is really picking the eyes, out of the country; but if enjoy, jaeat be the end ia view, who caies?