LOOKING-GLASS LAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 290, 14 December 1878, Page 5

LOOKING-GLASS LAND.

A Chicagoan, saya an American confcempory, who bas recently returned from Australia and Naw Zealand, says of the latter country— -."New Zealand ia a wonderland. Aa you sail towards it there risea before you a black, and to all appearance unbrolten, wall of stone. It ia a volcanic Island, and the coast ia very rough and dangerous. Yet Auckland has the most beautiful harbor my eyes have ever rested uppo. The vegetation is very Btrange and beautiful. I have seen fern trees twenty and tweuiy-hve feet high, with msgoiflceot fronds. The fern growth is marvellously luxuriant. There a- e about 150 varieties, and some of them the oddest shapes imaginable. Ooe kind, with a very delicate lavender leaf, i 8 Bin«u!ar)y handsome. There seems to be no to"---torn to the soil, either of the island or the continent. I have seen soil — black muck soil — twenty leot deep, and they told me that up the country were many immense 'downs' where twenty-five fast waa the average. It is impossible to over-cilculate the productive capacity of such ground as that. The great drawback to agriculture ia the recurrence of a yearly droi s h,. They are bagioiog to overcome this by meana of artesian wells and tin diversion of water-couries. It is a atrango and ia some respects a weird land. The guu> trees give a queer and ' creepy' aspect to every wood scene. Their limbs are gnarled and twisted in a way you eau't dissociate from an iiea of pain; their foiitge is scant and the white bark stares through it like hare arms. The birds are nearly all songless, though thsy have the most brilliant plumage. Most of them are quiet all day, but as soon a* night falls the woods are ringing with their harsh, discordant cries, lv fact, the coatinent is in many reapeots what you might call a lookingglass country — for everything seems to be reversed in it. The north ia warn?, the south is cold; day is quiet and night is full of lift; the vegetation smallest here ia largest there, and they have a bird without wings, and four-footed aiimals with baaks. But tbe hucaana are right-end up and wide-awake, and mlese I'm much mistaken they will make a country of it that the world will stand atmzad at."