PUNCH’S VIEW OF DOMINION

Shannon News, 22 December 1925, Page 4

PUNCH’S VIEW OF DOMINION

“EVERY VIRTUE AND CHARM” DECLINES TO RAVE OVER ROTORUA. Punch wont a-roving with .the Empire Press delegates in the person of Mr. A. P. Herbert, and in his latest article to reach the Dominion, mainly about Rotorua he pays a fine tribute to this country. More Loyal Than Crown. “New Zealand is a darling,” he writes. “She is more English than the English, more loyal than the Crown; she is as small as Great Britain and as hospitable as the United States; sh e has a population of a million odd and she produces more per head (including newspapers) than any other country in the world; 98 per cent, of her is pure British stock, which is more • than can be said of Britain; and there can be ho other place where the English tongue is by every class so purely spoken and with so little accent, dialect or twang. She is beautiful and prosperous and democratic and conservative; she has every virtue and every charm.” And then in obedience to the tradional call of gentle satire the writer proceeds with “But why [ wonder, in a country so full of pleasant things, are they so- proud of Rotorua.” “Every New Zealander says at once 'You are going to Rotorua; of course?’ as one might say ‘You’ll go to Westminster Abbey?’ And, knowing no better, we said we would. Rotorua is a health resort, the centre of a region of thermal activity. There you have baths in a grand Gevernment Park ,sulphur baths and mud baths, Rachel baths and Duchess baths, and all these are good for you. As you alight from the train a great whiff of sulphur greets you and remains with you until you depart. The first bath I took ior my health gave me a cold; the second gave me a noil; and after the third the cold turned to a chill. Once away from the spa I

throw off the chill, but the boil (and j £ have had many) has beaten all re. cords for perseverance and malignance and, 10, it was like hell.’ Smells the Smells. “The Rotorua is advertised not only as a spa, but as a spectacle. They took 'us out to Whakarewarewa, where the Arawa Maoris dwell, to seethe sights and smell the smells. They showed us the geyser valley, and ‘Look!’ .thy said proudly, and we looked; and 10, it was like hell. Steam issued from the earth iu all directions; beside the path were bubbling pools of water, deep, blue, bottomless and boiling; hot sulphur oozed among the bushes; steam vents, mud cones, i blow-holes, fumaroles, sulphur wells and I know not what were everywhere at work. , The whole valley, and indeed the -whole country, has been built over a hot bath. ‘We saw Pohutu make, a ‘.shoot’ which was fiot an inch less than sixty feet. Pohutu spouts by spasms and capriciously. He did not play for the Prince of Wales, neither did h e spout for the Admiral of the American fleet a day or two before us, but wc had not been in the valley twenty minutes before up he went, a beautiful Prince of Wales’ feathers hot.water fountain; and very fine he was.

“Our Maori guides (all ladies ,and very charming) remarked that our mission was exceptionally favoured by fortune; and so we thought till someone, whispered that they are able at will to provoke the marvellous natural forces of Pohutu to artificial activity by the application of common yellow soap. My own guide. Mihi, hotly denied the charge; other geysers, it might be, were sometimes so abused, but Pohutu was wholly unsusceptible to soap. And When I attempted a gentle cross-examina-tion the simple Maori maid replied, ‘Oh, gosh, Punch—-cut the comedy out!’ So let us leave it at that.

“I Should Keep it Dark.” “Mihi certainly was perfectly sweet and -it is the pleasant custom for a guide (or two) to walk arm in arm with the visitor, lest he fall into a bottomless cauldron and be boiled. Nevertheless I decline to rave about

the disorderly manifestations of nature which constitute a ‘thermal region,’ indeed, Avere I New Zealand I should keep it dark. It is as though one took a visitor into one s bathroom, showed him the taps run. ning and the bath leaking, and said, ‘The drain don’t work, and at any moment the pipes may explode. Isn’t it capital?” ' “I|h Maoris dwell in the middle of this mess . And as long as the village does not explode it is without doubt an aid to village, life. It warms the I house, makes cooking simple and Avashing cheap.” Mr. I-loneybubble, the foil from whom “A-P.H.” will never part, . makes his entry to represent the i character avlio is prepared to. take a ] good deal of thermal actrnty for j granted so that he may get out of the rain and brood upon his boil. “For !my part,” remarks the satirist, “I j cared A r ery little what might be the | explanation of these things. There iis a very simple one, ■ and that is • Biblical. Well, what is one to think? ' I had seen Avith my own eyes, in the ' churchyard at Ohinemutu ,a small but constant jet of sulphurous st e am 1 cmrging from- the gra-A r e of a solicitor.

“Just now, hOAveA'er, I AA-as thinkingof mv boil. And when at the far side of the dreadful region Mr. Kone.vbubble halted, dripping but delighted, and proposed to return bv the same route, ‘Honeybubble,’ I said. ‘I have myself seen quite enough of the excesses of nature and the disorderly eruptions of the foul powers. I shall now return to the hotel; and anyone who is not so satisfied is rree to look at my boil. Which is not less remarkable, and quite as unpleasant.”

.Pom’s .Ancestry. “A Labour member rose *and told the Government quite frankly that, so far as they had a policy, ft was a policy of window dressing. They never turned a hair. Only, on the front bench (Government) sat a Maori Minister ,the one live figure in the waste of words. Crouching low behind his desk, he fixed his lively belligerent eyes' on the speakers and peered across the barrier like one

his warrior ancestors about to spring; and from time to time lie flung at the orator a low,, polemical, exultant laugh most disconcerting, I imagine, to his enemy. This gentleman, whose family I met, had a grandfather who ate the first Presbyterian missionary to arrive in New Zealand, and modestly attributes his political success, I am told ,to his Scottish ancestry. Now, as we cross the Tasman Sea to Sydney,' we hear by wireless that the same . Maori Minister - has provoked a storm of protest by re. ferring to the leader of the Opposition as ‘Snivelling George,’ I am afraid they have little to learn here from the mother of Parliaments.” | .In these excerpts can be found the j spirit of what A. P. H. saw in New I Zealand.