Traveller's Impressions

Te Ao Hou, October 1956, Page 56

Traveller's Impressions If you have a map of the Pacific handy you will see that I have been working my way erratically, but steadily, south, and have at last arrived at New Zealand and a lightweight travel book about our own country. I cannot honestly recommend Islands of Contrast, by Beryl M. Miles, as first-class reading. Allowing that first-hand knowledge of an author's material can turn the average reader into a superior and often niggling critic, Miss Miles' book is still far from adequate. At its best, her writing is amusing and timidly informative. At its worst, her style is that of an impressionable schoolgirl fond of coy exclamations and over-description. Still, it could be much worse. At least she does not attempt to analyse the ‘average New Zealander's character’ after a few weeks' stay in the country, as some other overseas authors have done. Miss Miles, and another young woman came to New Zealand with

an Australian photographer to photograph the country's best-known scenic attractions. The country that emerges from Miss Miles' enthusiastic descriptions of the trip is chock-a-block full of mountains, bush, glaciers, lakes, hot springs and active volcanoes. Quite enough to discourage any intending immigrants unless they are of the pioneering variety or surveyors out of a job. On the other hand, I found her first encounter with a glacier interesting, and their expedition to and through the Homer Tunnel in appalling weather with floods and landslides threatening, quite exciting. Her treatment of Maori material—the migration, several myths and legends, greenstone work, modern Maoris of Rotorua—is quite inadequate, but sincere and not ‘quaint’. In spite of its shortcomings this book is worth reading, because it does make one realise how travel writers, even those with the best of intentions, can distort and touch up the true picture.