THE UBIQUITOUS NEW ZEALANDER

New Zealand Times, 12 September 1907, Page 7

THE ÜBIQUITOUS NEW ZEALANDER

In the English illustrated journals, one often finds the portrait of a village nonagenarian, and there is frequently a legend written underneath possibly in something like the following terms: “William Smith, who for .iixty-eight years was snepherd to Lord Aoreton. Mr Smith had never travelled on a railway train in his life.” When .William of tihe Shires goes to a neighbouring village" for the weekend his sorrowing relatives gather round him and bid him a fond farewell. He is going out into the great whirling world. To-day you meet young William Smith in Wellington, to-morrow in Napier, and you may pick him up In Auckland next • week if you also jiave business that way. The trains on the New Zealand main lines seem always crowded, the steamers frequently have nothing but “shakedowns” to offer. No people constitute so “floating” a population as Now Zealanders, and travel is reflected in their understanding of their country. JCven the town boy. refuses'to get_ “bushed,” and ho .vnows the lay of his country in a- way !hat cannot bo learned by booksloung as tho country is, New Zealanders have travelled far and are world-wide «in their peregrinations, lou will find tho Now Zealander znanagxng a mine at Kiondyko, a canning factory at Chicago, medically engaged in Park Lane, Loudon, fighting on the Indian frontier, surveying on the bold ;Coast, and prospecting in Westralia. The love of movement, the desire for change, for adventure and enterprise passed to him from his emigrant sire. The New Zealander chafes under the ordered conditions of everyday sameness. Ho likes largeness, >pao9 and newness—and his pocket being fairly full just now, he indulges his penchant.