THE CHARM OF NEW ZEALAND.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2132, 29 October 1885, Page 2

THE CHARM OF NEW ZEALAND.

Professor H. A. Strong, in the course of an interesting article in Good Words for August, says: "New Zealand has the very extraordinary property of causing all who have set foot on her shores to pass beneath the indescribable spell of her witchery. I never met anyone who having tasted life in this new island home, would consent to change his abode. Switzerland has loftier peaks and fairer towns: Tyrol may boast prettier outlines; Scotland lias her classic heather, and her brown hillsides; Norway historic memories which linger in her winding fiords; but, having gazed at and fancied myself in love with each of the syrens in turn, I am ever drawn back to my ideal beauty, New Zealand. Nature does not often play the prodigal. To New Zealand she has given all her charms, and keeps them fresh and imperiously beautiful as Cleopatra's.' Li no other country has she set down towering mountains beside profound fiords, and backed the scene by dense forests sloping down on the other side of the range into fertile pastures. In no other spot does she find so dolt an attiring woman as in: the climate of New Zealand, who loves to exhibit her mistress in an atmosphere of blue relieved by a carpet of brown aud green. lam quite aware that this collocation of color ought to sound hideous and repulsive in the last degree, but I am certain those who, like the author of ' Erewhon' have lived in New Zealand till they learn to catch the spirit of her scenery will bear me out that the effect is passing beautiful. Then, was there ever a land of streams so crystal clear which challenge you to count every pebble that lies beneath their arrowy current ? And is there not an unspeakable charm in findinp oneself among a sea of snow or of cloud-cappsd peaks, many unnamed, and most untrodden by anyone ?"