(COPYRIGHT.) (All Rights Reserved by "Evening Post.")

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 54, 1 September 1943, Page 6

(COPYRIGHT.) (All Rights Reserved by "Evening Post.")

Wednesday, September 1 [on train before reaching Auckland]

Rotorua, New Zealand, is in the heart of-the Maori country. The Maoris first settled this country and were never conquered by the future white settlers but signed a treaty under which the Maoris have become- loyal subjects of the.British Crown. The town gave us a civic reception on our arrival but the Maori people gave me their own welcome in the evening. Immediately after lunch we visited Whakarewarewa, which is a miniature Yellowstone Park. Guide Rangi greeted me at the gate of the reconstituted Maori < village and we rubbed noses in proper. Maori greeting. Then we saw the meeting place where every weekend hundreds of our men have been entertained. Afterwards we went to see the cold stream which runs on the surf ace! while boiling hot pools come up all around it.1 There are mud pools which one, could watch, endlessly for, as they bubble/flowers and figures of all kinds appear. By great good fortune the .largest^ geyser spouted for us and it was a beautiful sight. We went out through the real village and were shown how the food is cooked over the hot steam. They feed 600- of Our men at a time by using this outdoor kitchen, and the corn on the cob is cooked in a small pool which is well over boiling temperature.

We found the children bathing in a hot pool and they dived for pennies for us and invariably caught them before they reached the bottom. Then they ran to the cold pool to show us they were equally good in either pool. Rangi told us that they never quarrelled 'if one child got more pennies than another, and each one could leave his pile of pennies on the side of the pool and no other child tried to snitch any. This honesty is

not taught but instinctive, she said. • Before we parted she took us to her own house and with characterise generosity gave me one of the. dancing skirts they wear which look like porcupine quills but are really made of flax. Rangi is no longer a very young woman, I imagine, but, her face is beautiful in contour and her wit kept us all entertained as she showed us about.

From this park we drove to a farm where we saw Maori women employed to care for a fine herd of cows. The girls were on: horseback and rode well, but they were assisted by a dog who thought :all the responsibility was his, and who really was a great help. These same girls herded sheep .and caught and held, for my inspection a ewe and her triplets, three' fine little lambs. We also 'saw girls driving the tractor and harrowing with a team of three very fine heavy farm horses, which were driven as easily as if a woman had always handled them. The man in charge told me that he thought women were now filling about 75 per c.ent. of the farm jobs formerly held by men. • • • ■

At a little after 8 p.m. we reached the Centennial Meeting House, Tamatekapua Street,. OhinemutUi where the Maori people, extended their welcome. Women. do not "speak there as a:.rule so the gods had to be invoked, but I was allowed to speak because I was a mother in a great democracy whose men'were fighting with their own men. Their dances, their songs, and their gifts are all symbolic, and the whole evening expressed friendship ; for the United States and its people.

This morning we are up early. Our train will reach Auckland at 8 a.m. and by 9 o'clock -.ye must, start out on what seems on paper to be quite a long schedule. , ■ .

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT.