RETURN TO CIVILISATION.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12766, 12 April 1910, Page 4

RETURN TO CIVILISATION.

AFTER A LONG LAPSE OF YEARS.

SURPRISES TO AN ISLANDER.

{Special to ••'ihe Colonist.")

Christchurch, April 11. Mr F. A. D. Cox, who has spent about a week in Christchurch, nas come back to a centre oi population after an absence oi many jears, and uungs which arc regarded with lndificrenco by those who aro used to them appear to him as the marvels of a nesh age. He has lived oa the Chai> nam Islands lor forty-live years (says tho '-'limes"). During that period, except ior Ins present visit, lib has left the ishuius only once, and that was twenty-five years ago, when he paid his hrst brief visit to this city. Until last week he never saw a bicycle, ah electric tram-car, a taxi-cab, or even a hansom cab. He is astonished at the numbers of people who rushed past him on bicycles, and he was for some time at a loss to understand how all old and young alike manage to. sit on their wheels so easily and gracefully without any apparent danger of falling off. A visit to a modern newspaper office, and a night at a kinematograph cntertaiuxneut, surprised him more than anything else. He is an old soldier, _ having been an officer in the Army in India at the time of the Mutiny, and he saw amongst the moving pictures representations of .scenes in the South African war, which gave- ihini a good idea of the changes brought about in regard to modern methods of fighting. He found a great deal of interest in the modern style of uniforms, and the accoutrements of the big gun armaments. Representations of scenes from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" sent his mind back to the last Shakespearean play he had seen in England, with Charles Kean in the

leading part. Tho traffic, the street noises, and tho cries of tho newsboys, mado Christchurch to-day appear to him as London was whon he left it some fifty years ago. He is impressed with the" healthy appearance of the young people here, especially tho young girls. Ho can hardly understand the change that has come over industrial affairs, and he is surprised at the position occupied by trades unionism and workers' organisations, which are very different things now from what they were when ho left the busy centres to live "the simple life," ou a remote island in the Pacific Ocean.