LOOKING-GLASS LAND.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 68, 25 January 1879, Page 2

LOOKING-GLASS LAND.

, A Ghicagoan, saysanAmerican'contemporary, who lias recently returned from Australia and New Zealand, says of. the latter country" New Zealand is a wonderland. As your sail-towards it there rises before you a black, and to all appearances unbroken, wall of stone. It is a; volcanic island, and the coast is very rough and dangerous, Yet Auckland has the most beautiful harbour my eyes ever rested upon. The vegetation is very strange and beautiful. 1 have seen fern trees twenty and twenty-five feet high,, with magnificent fronds. The fern growth •is marvellously luxuriant. There arc' about 160 varieties, and some of them the oddest shapes imaginable. One kind, with a very delicate lavender leal;, is singularly handsome. There seems to be no bottom to the soil, cither of the island or the continent. I have seen soil—black muck soil —twenty feet deep, and they told me that up the country were many immense downs where twenty-fivo feet wero the average. It is impossible to over-calculate the productive capacity of such ground as that. -, The great drawback to agriculture is the recurrence of a yearly drought. They are beginning to overcome this by means of artesian wells and the diversion of watercourses, It is a strange; .and in. Bomo respects, a weird land. The gum trees give a queer and creepy aspect to every wood scene. Their limbs are gnarled and twisted in a way you cannot disassociate from an idea of pain; their foliage is scant, and the white-bark; stares through it like bare arnjs, The birds are nearly all

songless, though they- have the moat bral Jiantplumage.' Most Of. them aro quiet all day, but as noon as night.falls tliG' woods are ringing with their harsh, discordant .cries,: In fact, the continent is in many respects what you might call a lookingglass country—for everything Booms to be rovetsed in.it, ■ The north is w&vm, tliel south is cold; day is quiet, and night is full of life ; the vegetation smallest here is largest there, and they have a' bird without wings, and four-footed animals with beaks. But the humans, are brightend up and .wide-aw.ake, and' unless - I'm much mistaken they will make '.a country of it that' the world will "stand'amazad at." The foregoing seems 'rather mixedf ■ Th 6 writer has evidently travelled, in both Australia and New Zealand, and has confused the distinctive features $f both in 'a manner highly overdose of "ginsling." ... O'HHy v