Front matter (continued 2)

FRIDAY, JANUARY 17.—In Rotorua, a great deal is made of the native women who act as guides. One hears of Maggie, the guide, before reaching the town, but we did not see her; she became so famous that an Englishman married her, and she is now living unhappily in London. But there are many others here, for the profession is easily learned; after one trip through the geyser field, I am certain I would be competent to act as a guide. The native woman who accompanied us pointed out several holes where people had fallen in and lost their lives. She says that when a man falls in a hot pool, he disappears, and nothing is ever seen of him again, except his liver; in a few hours after the man disappears, his liver is seen floating on the surface, and is recovered. This is the sort of information possessed by the guides. A native woman fell into one hot crater, and the guides say her screaming can still be heard. I listened attentively, and the hissing steam made a noise at times which sounded something like a woman’s scream.... In the warm pools, boys and girls swim together, stark naked. The entrance to the geyser field is over a bridge spanning a roaring stream, and girls fourteen and fifteen years old jump from this bridge into the water, if pennies are thrown as an inducement. The jump is a high one, and I saw no boys making it. In one warm pool where naked boys and girls were in bathing we saw a little white girl, but the guide did not know her, and could not explain how she came there.... Every visitor to New Zealand soon remarks that the women do not care much about their feet or figures. Still, their waists and feet do not seem larger than they should be; perhaps women in other parts of the world unnaturally pinch themselves.... Tourists do all sorts of queer things. One woman who sits at our table carries her own tea and teapot, and another carries her own bread.... A rumor came to the hotel today that the big geysers were spouting, and there was hurrying among the guests, but the rumor proved only partly true; the spouting lasted only a few minutes, and the guests of the Grand did not see it. Last Wednesday, when we were on the lake trip, the big geysers spouted nine hours, breaking all records. A bulletin board is displayed in the hotel office, and this is used to keep the guests informed as to the doings of the geysers.... There seems to be no doubt that we look funny. In walking about, we hear people say to each other, as we pass, “They are Americans.” They say it softly, and do not think we hear it, for the people here are very polite; but we do hear it, and we remark that people stare at us when they think we are not looking. We undoubtedly look odd to them. I wonder if our talk sounds as funny to them as theirs sounds to us? ... Wages are not as high here as in the United States, but we often hear the statement made that this is more than compensated for by the lower cost of living. We went into a grocery store today, and inquired prices. Potatoes sell at three cents a pound; cabbage, eight cents a head; green peas, thirty-two cents a peck; sugar, six cents a pound; flour, $3 per hundred pounds; bread, eight cents a loaf; crackers, twelve cents a pound; tomatoes and peaches, twenty-four cents per two-pound can; eggs, forty-two cents per dozen; butter, twenty-eight cents a pound. An inferior watermelon costs seventy-five cents; round steak, eighteen cents a pound; leg of mutton, twelve cents; loin of mutton, ten. But prices are higher here than in the average New Zealand town, as not much is produced in this vicinity. The grocer said freight rates were extortionate, although the railroad is owned by the government. The apples displayed were from California, but I did not know the variety, although the grocer asked me the question.... You frequently see here tin cans labeled “Pratt’s benzine;” but if you examine the label closely, you note that it is supplied by the Standard Oil Co., of New York.... Although lake trout are caught in great quantities here, it is against the law to sell them. We saw a man come in today with as many rainbow trout as he and two boys could carry. Lake trout are not particularly good fish. Brook trout are possibly the best fish in the world, but the lake trout are larger, and coarser; we have seen them here weighing twenty-two pounds, but the average is nearer three pounds. In one pool at Rotorua, thousands of trout may be seen swimming around, and children feed them with bread crumbs.... Some of the grazing land in New Zealand, after it has been cleared, manured, and seeded to grass, becomes very valuable. It is worth as high as $400 an acre. Choice land is worth an equal amount in Australia, but in both Australia and New Zealand there is plenty of land that may be had for almost nothing; but it is worth no more than is charged for it.... It is generally believed that the original New Zealanders, the original Hawaiians, and the people living in the islands between, came from the same general stock. The language was evidently the same at one time, and has been corrupted into dialects. The native New Zealanders are exactly like our American Indians, in appearance; perhaps they are all of the same original stock. The people of Samoa look like the Hawaiians, the Mexicans and the Indians; and the people of the South Sea islands were such adventurous navigators that the Samoan group is also known as the Navigator Islands, and probably many centuries ago the islands extended much nearer to the mainland of North America than at present. The surface of the earth is constantly changing; where lofty mountain ranges once existed, are now vast level plains; our present tropics were once in the frigid zone, and many islands that once existed have disappeared. No doubt the original inhabitants of North America found their way there from the westward, by means which we cannot now clearly understand.... New Zealand was originally a very poor country; it had almost no animals, and its vegetation was scanty. All the sheep, cattle, horses, hogs, fowls, deer, etc., were brought here; when Captain Cook was killed in the Hawaiian islands, by natives, he had been distributing live-stock in the islands of the South Seas, to benefit the inhabitants. Trout are now plentiful in the clear and rapid streams of New Zealand, but they were brought here. Before the American Revolution there were plenty of hogs in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Sea islands. The natives traded hogs to the sailors for knives, nails, hatchets, etc., and these hogs had been introduced by white men, at great expense and trouble. The white man has always been trying to help his more backward dark-skinned brother.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18.—Rotorua, with all its charms, becomes very tiresome after a few days. A second visit to the geyser fields is like seeing a play a second time, and we are impatient to move on. The first time you see fifteen-year-old girls, scantily dressed, diving for pennies, it is a startling sight, but in a little while you do not care for it. When two Maori women meet, they rub their foreheads together. That ceremony interested me for a time, but it does not now, and we leave here tomorrow.... When we first arrived, the manager said: “I will seat you in the dining-room with an American.” The man was exactly like an American, but he actually came from Vancouver, B.C. Canadians are more like Americans than any other people.... I have not seen such a thing as door or window screens in New Zealand. This is the middle of summer, and flies are numerous, but no attempt is made to keep them out. I dislike to pass a meat market, because I always encounter great swarms of flies. They have ice here, but do not use it much.... We visited a moving-picture theatre this afternoon, and it was exactly like the moving-picture shows at home; ridiculous plays of the melodrama order, made in America, and an orchestra consisting of a piano-player who plays with tremendous force. As we came away from the moving-picture show we passed the smallest hotel in town, and of course it was known as “The Palace.” ... I have never seen such magnificent sweet pea blooms as I have seen here, and they are now at their best. Roses also seem to do particularly well here, and we visited a rose garden today which would have done credit to California. There was an acre or more of roses, and all the varieties seemed to be different. The garden is owned by the government, which does all sorts of things over here, and is cared for by convicts.... We have had no mail from home in five weeks. The people at the American naval station at Pago Pago, Samoa, receive mail only once a month, and say they do not mind it; that mail every day is a daily worry, whereas if you receive mail but once a month your worries are greatly reduced. You are always expecting important mail which never arrives, and a daily mail, they say, is really a nuisance.... One of the baths here is known as a Spout bath. You go down into a cave, and water falls on you from six feet above. The water comes from one of the boiling springs, cooled to an endurable temperature by the addition of a stream from a cold lake. Water is conducted from the lakes in trenches to the baths. The water in the Spout bath has a good deal of oil in it, and is said to be particularly good for rheumatism. But the worst case of rheumatism I ever saw was in front of the Spout bathhouse. A native man was so crippled with it that he moved as slowly as a snail, and was a pitiful object.... There arrived at this hotel today a man and wife I had known on the “Sonoma.” He is a fine old gentleman who lives in a country town in Ohio, but he has at least one habit to which his wife seriously objects. They sat opposite us in the dining-room, and I noticed that the old gentleman parted his hair behind, in the old-fashioned way. And it seemed, also, that he used hair oil, for regularly three times a day I heard his wife mumbling a protest because of this hair-oil habit. And tonight at dinner the wife appeared alone, and was seated at our table, as the manager knew we were acquaintances. Presently the old gentleman appeared; he had been indulging in his favorite dissipation, hair oil, and his wife at once noticed it, and mumbled a protest. The old gentleman pays no attention to her; indeed, he does not pay much attention to anyone, as he is a very quiet man. On the “Sonoma” he was an early riser, as I was, and usually he barely spoke to me when I appeared. But I saw him quite animated one morning. He was seated on deck, looking out at the sea, and, soon after I sat down near him, he burst out into a tirade against the farmers with whom he did business as a country merchant thirty or forty years ago. He said that in the old day he bought wrapping-twine of farmers, and that almost invariably he found a stone in the middle of each ball. One conspicuous offender was an old Baptist deacon. On one occasion, when this man came into the store after sugar, the merchant placed in the scoop, with the sugar, a number of stones taken from balls of twine purchased of the deacon. The deacon watched the performance, but never said a word; he knew he was guilty, and calmly took his medicine.... I have witnessed many amateur performances, but the most amusing one I saw in Rotorua this evening. It was an entertainment given by native Maoris, and the women guides had been selling tickets several days. The accompaniments were played on an accordion, and twenty-five persons took part in some of the numbers. Twelve young girls sang, and among them I noticed a number of the fifteen-year-old divers who had jumped for my pennies yesterday at the bridge marking the entrance to the geyser field. Fourteen men gave a war dance, and about that number of women gave a “hooche-kooche.” The entire performance was of this character, and so poor that it was amusing. After appearing on the stage, the performers came down to seats in the audience, as amateurs do everywhere, and laughed and giggled. Every act was applauded, and every performer had an encore number. One of the men who appeared in the war dance must have been seventy years old; rather venerable, I thought, for an amateur. We stood it for an hour, because there was absolutely nothing else to do. The English pickle and jam manufacturers, and tradesmen of every kind, claim notable patrons, therefore I was not surprised to find this on the programme: “Patronized by Lord Kitchener, Madame Melba, and many other distinguished visitors.” The performance closed with the song, “God Save the King,” and a dance. The audience was small, and composed entirely of whites, but out in front of the hall were hundreds of Maoris lounging about.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 19.—I write this by the light of a tallow candle in a little hotel twenty-four miles from Rotorua. We came here today by a circuitous route, and saw many wonders on the way. The hotel at which I am a guest tonight exists to accommodate visitors to the Waiotapu valley geysers, and these I shall see tomorrow morning, and proceed to Wairakei, twenty-seven miles, by motor in the afternoon. The names here are something dreadful; one place we visited yesterday is called Whakarewarewa, but people refer to it familiarly as Whak.... We left Rotorua at 8:15 this morning, by stage. We had seats with the driver, which, in staging, is an honor equal to a seat at the captain’s table on a ship. We had a pleasant drive of three hours through mountains, passing Green and Blue lakes on the way. One lake is really green and the other is really blue, and both may be seen at the same time from a high place on the stage road. At Green lake we encountered a photographer, who, after taking our picture, accompanied us down to a buried town. While we were looking at these ruins, which occupied us possibly half an hour, the photographer developed and printed the picture, and took orders from certainly ten of the fourteen passengers.... In 1886 this section was visited by an earthquake. A tract of country nineteen miles long was affected, and 135 people, mostly natives, were killed. After taking a look at the town buried in 1886, we drove a mile, and embarked on a launch for a ride of eight miles. Then we walked over a mountain, and embarked on another launch for a ride of six miles across White lake. This lake is really a crater, and in spots the water is boiling hot. For some reason, the water is nearly as white as milk, and in the crumbling walls surrounding the lake are hundreds of smoking geysers. The place looks like a lake in purgatory, and the country surrounding it is as desolate and barren as can be imagined. On this ride we passed the site of the terraces, or mammoth hot springs, which were destroyed by the eruption twenty-six years ago. When we landed, we met another party, going the route we had come, and, as soon as we disembarked, they went on board, and left us. We found an old guide waiting for us, and started on a walk of three miles through a lava-bed. We were always in sight of smoking springs and geysers. At one place we were compelled to ford a considerable stream, and the guide carried the women across.... The guide was much the smartest man of his profession we have seen. Just how accurate his information is, I do not know. He says that most of the great processes in geology are carried on by internal fires in the earth, and that what we see on the surface here is constantly going on, on a very much larger scale, deeper down. The water from every cool, limpid spring is sent to the surface by the same forces that cause the mud lakes to bubble and growl; the water of every cold spring was originally steam, and the water was cleaned of impurities on its long journey to the surface.... The geyser field of New Zealand is more than a hundred miles long, and during our journey of twenty-four miles today we were rarely out of sight of smoking springs. But the most curious thing we have seen is the White lake, which occupies a crater caused by the earthquake of 1886. The lake has no outlet, and, until a few years ago, was a mud geyser. Then it began to fill with hot water from below. In spots the water is only warm at the surface, but in many places it is boiling.... The end of our three-mile walk was a government rest-house. Here we found a carriage awaiting us, and we drove seven miles to the hotel where we are spending the night. A storm was threatening when we arrived at the rest-house, and we were anxious to hurry on, but the English people with us insisted on having their afternoon tea, and we were forced to wait for them.... Part of the country over which we traveled today looked like the lake district of Scotland; the first lake on which we traveled reminded me of Loch Katrine, and the stage road to it was something like the Trossachs. But after we reached the lake where the water is white, and occupying a crater smoking all around the edges, we saw something we had never seen the like of before.... Wild blackberries are a pest in this section. We saw hundreds of acres of wild blackberry bushes during our drive today, the berries just ripening. The best way to get rid of the bushes, the driver said, was to put goats among them.... This lava district was formerly considered worthless. Some years ago a man leased fifteen thousand acres of it from the government, at a rental of £29 per year, or $145. He burned off the bush, sowed a lot of clover seed, and is now getting rich from sheep.... When I arrived at this hotel I was very dirty and dusty, from riding on two stages on dusty roads. So I asked the proprietor for a bath. He gave me a towel, and called a boy, who led me to a creek two hundred yards down the hill. The water was warm, and, after warning me not to go above or below into very hot water, the boy left me to enjoy my swim.... On a ship, an American is always interested in seeing the English passengers going to their morning baths. They are seen in all the halls and on all the decks, barefooted, and wearing pajamas. But early this morning, at the Grand Hotel in Rotorua, I saw a still more unusual sight. An Englishman came out of the hotel at 7:30 wearing slippers on bare feet, and dressed only in pajamas. I supposed he was going to one of the hotel bathrooms, but instead of that, he walked out on the streets of Rotorua, and calmly proceeded to one of the big bath-houses three or four blocks away. He was dressed exactly as I represent him; bareheaded, and smoking a pipe.... While taking an early walk this morning, I encountered the courthouse in Rotorua. Here are some of the signs on the office doors: “Stipendiary Magistrate;” “Registrar of Old Age Pensions;” “Vaccination Inspector;” “Registrar of Deaths, Births and Marriages.” The office hours of the different officials were: Saturdays, 10 A.M. to noon; week days, 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 P.M. to 4 P.M. Counting holidays, that is an average of about four hours a day for New Zealand officials.... At the moving-picture shows here the best seats are 36 cents, and a seat on a bench in the extreme rear of the hall costs 12 cents.... In a Rotorua paper I picked up last night, I saw a statement that a man had been fined $125 “for sly grog-selling.” That is what we call “bootlegging.”

MONDAY, JANUARY 20.—I awoke this morning at 5 o’clock, and found the sun coming up. You have perhaps noted that the sun is not up at 5 A.M. on the 20th of January in our part of the world. While the days are very warm here, the nights are quite cool; at 5 A.M. I was quite cold in bed, and awoke to look for more covering.... I read myself to sleep last night, very comfortably, by the light of a tallow candle. Electric lights do not seem to be absolutely necessary to the comfort of mankind.... In riding over the mountains here, I find great tracts of flourishing pine trees which have been planted by the government. Convicts did the work. By this means, the barren mountains are being changed into a living green.... Late last night, a man somewhere about the hotel engaged in singing; alcoholic singing, I judged. The vulgar rich are generously abused, but I have noticed that the higher priced the hotel, the more polite the guests are.... But while this little hotel in the mountains of New Zealand is somewhat primitive, I prefer it to the best steamship that ever existed. For breakfast this morning we had soft-boiled eggs, toast and coffee, with mutton chops and bacon offered. That is enough for anyone. But on a ship you are offered a hundred things you do not want, by professional waiters who are wondering how much of a gratuity they can coax out of you. The breakfast this morning was served by a girl who, barring her pronunciation, seemed real nice. She expects no tip; she expects her pay from the proprietor, whom I have heard her refer to as Mr. Hickey. And while my room is small, I at least haven’t two snoring gentlemen in with me.... A young gentleman who ate breakfast with me has charge of the local postoffice, and says there are several big sheep ranches in the vicinity, from which he gets a good deal of mail. The sheep here are well bred, and not at all like the range sheep of the United States.... While writing in my room last night I felt a shock, and thought some object had fallen about the hotel. This morning I learned it was an earthquake; we had three shocks during the night. Near this place is a place called Earthquake Flat. In passing it the stage-drivers rest their teams a few minutes, and give the passengers a chance to experience an earthquake shock. Ten minutes never goes by at that point without one. At Rotorua, one night we were there, sixty earthquake shocks were noted from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M.... This morning, in walking through the Waiotapu geyser field, we had a satisfactory guide; a native Maori. He didn’t say much, and, if we wanted to know about anything, asked him about it. Yesterday we had a guide who talked incessantly, and he was a bore. He was an Englishman, and we were glad to get rid of him. Adelaide refused to go out to the geyser field this morning; she is tired seeing them, as they are all much alike.... At 1 P.M. today we left Waiotapu for Wairakei, in a seven-passenger Napier automobile. The distance is twenty-seven miles, over a mountain road, and we ran it in two hours, with the usual rests for tea. The roads were good, and the ride enjoyable. The Napier is an English six-cylinder car, and the driver was very capable and agreeable.... Arriving at the hotel at Wairakei, we found the most gallant man in the world. He runs a hotel consisting of a number of detached buildings. In the main one he has two toilet-rooms for women, with modern plumbing, but the men are compelled to content themselves with a toilet-room of the country-hotel pattern, located out in the yard, near the stables, and it is very filthy, and filled with big blue flies. Another law I suggest is, that no man be allowed to conduct a hotel until he is able to provide proper toilet facilities. The hotel at Wairakei is located near a geyser field. Another difference between Yellowstone Park and the New Zealand geyser country is that in the Yellowstone you find modern hotels; that at the Norris geyser basin is a palace. Here, after leaving Rotorua, we found the hotels primitive, and not very comfortable.... There are many deer in New Zealand; also wild cattle, wild pigs, California quail, pheasants, etc. Several times I have seen California quail along the country roads.... A remarkable thing we saw yesterday was a mud volcano; a small mountain, in the center of which was a boiling mud spring. The spring is constantly throwing out mud, and thus the mountain grows steadily in height.... To be a Maori, is to be a pensioner. The natives employ smart lawyers to bring all sorts of claims against the government, and these win often enough to be profitable. The lands the natives own are uncultivated, and the natives are a drawback to the country. All of which is very much American Indian.... Over here the government does everything, including selling tickets to tourists. The government owns the town of Rotorua, and brings it water and light from waterfalls in the neighboring mountains.... If you are a bad sleeper, do not travel. I was awake at 4 o’clock this morning, and there was not the slightest noise about the hotel from that hour until 7:15, when I heard an alarm clock go off. You don’t know what it is to be really lonesome unless you have spent a sleepless night in a strange hotel in a strange country.... A man came in this evening from Lake Taupo, with a big catch of trout. Some of the fish were very thin in flesh; so thin that they were worthless. It is said fish are so plentiful in the lake that there is not enough for them to eat. Most of the fish weighed from six to seven pounds.... We hear of geysers that shoot steam and hot water fifteen hundred feet in the air, but we have seen no geyser here more than thirty feet high. The big sights are always just over when I come along.... At this hotel, when you wish to take a bath, you go out to the manager’s office, and find a key hanging beside the door. This key opens a door down in the canyon, back of the hotel. The bath consists of a great pool of hot water. There is no roof over the pool, but it is fenced in. Within the enclosure, also, is a pool of cold water, into which you may plunge after a hot bath. Certain hours are devoted to gentlemen, and certain hours to ladies.... Rooms in this hotel are also lighted with candles, and I dislike to blow out my candle and go to bed, as I can smell the extinguished wick half the night.... The food in New Zealand is universally good; we have come to the conclusion that the New Zealanders are famous cooks.... We find a good many private cars touring in this section, as the government devotes much attention to roads, which are generally excellent, barring the terrible dust. Yesterday we met a little Ford machine, and it seemed to be kicking up about as much dust as any of them.... The rainfall here is greater than in the best agricultural sections of the United States, but the bulk of the rain falls in winter, whereas our moisture is better distributed over the growing season.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 21.—We have made three trips today, looking at the wonders in the Wairakei field; we have devoted at least nine hours to sightseeing, which is not a bad day’s work. One of the wonders is the Blow Hole; a great hole on top of a mountain out of which steam pours constantly, and with a great noise. This is called the safety-valve of New Zealand. Surrounding it we found a number of empty four-gallon oil tins; cans in which old Rockefeller had shipped gasoline to this country. The driver of our carriage threw these cans into the blow-hole, and the steam shot them out again. The noise reminded me of steam being blown out of a locomotive boiler, in preparation for washing it. There are no hot springs or geysers within four or five miles of the Blow Hole; it is a solitary attraction, and the steam ascending from it may be seen many miles.... Although the big terraces were covered up by the earthquake of 1886, we have seen two or three small and imperfect ones. As you walk through the Wairakei valley you notice that the earth is red, and green, and yellow, and white, and blue in places. The guide gave me a card on which he had made many colors with mud; it reminded me of a painter’s color-card. All this is like the Yellowstone, and everything here is much like the geyser fields in our greatest national park, but it seems to me that the Yellowstone is much superior, in every way. Facilities for getting about are much the same, and prices about the same, but the hotel accommodations in the Yellowstone are undoubtedly better.... At one place in Wairakei valley, steam pours out of a number of small holes in the earth. Bottles are placed beside the steam holes in such a way that an incessant whistling is kept up, in half a dozen different keys. At another place, what sounds like cannonading may be heard deep in the earth; in another, at the bottom of a lake, you may hear what sounds like a blacksmith hammering on an anvil. As you walk along, the earth sounds hollow to the tread, and every little while there is a cave-in, and a new hot spring or geyser appears.... I have spoken several times, in a good-natured way, of the difference in American and English pronunciation. A change may not be expected; indeed, I think the difference is becoming greater all the time, since the English children have a worse pronunciation than their parents. We have been traveling several days with a father and mother and two young daughters. The father and mother pronounce their words almost as we do, but both the daughters have a brogue that is the most pronounced I have heard. I hope I have written good-naturedly of the differences in pronunciation, for I like the people I meet. Most of the travelers are New Zealanders or Australians, but I can’t tell them from the English, except that the New Zealanders and Australians frequently criticise the English to me. They say, for one thing, that young Englishmen who have nothing to do, come over here, and set a bad example; that here, young people are expected to work, and are not much respected unless they do. Many New Zealanders have told me that they have too many holidays; too many amusements.... I hear exactly the same talk here of high taxes and public extravagance that I hear at home, and I am told that politicians are about as mischievous, active and troublesome in New Zealand as elsewhere. At home, we hear a great deal about the value of the single-tax system. New Zealand has that system, and today I heard a Wellington lawyer criticising it very severely. It is a single tax in theory only, since New Zealand has about as many different forms of taxation as any other country. New Zealand has tried more experiments than we have, but gets no better results from its laws than we get. It is attacking the trusts, just as we are doing, and the trusts continue to flourish; there are some things you can’t do by law, and New Zealand can’t accomplish the impossible any more than we can. I hear that compulsory arbitration worked for a time, as I hear that a week, or month, or year, before I came, the geysers shot three hundred feet in the air; but it is positively known that the country now has as many and as ridiculous strikes as any other, and the best geysers have done only twenty or thirty feet in my presence. The New Zealand railroads are primitive compared with ours, and their rates higher; yet they have government ownership, which many Americans say would solve the railroad problem. New Zealanders do not say their methods are better than ours; on the contrary, they regard the United States with a great deal of respect, and know that we are far in the lead. New Zealanders have the same respect for the United States that you find in Kansas City for Chicago; we are the Big Boy in the family of nations, and nobody seriously disputes it. Some foreigners make fun of us, because they are envious, but the New Zealanders do not.... Men are about the same everywhere: the native who today drove me to see a wonderful rapids in a river, said he knew the best fishing-hole in the entire stream, and wanted me to remain over tomorrow, and go fishing with him. But I do not intend to do it; I have no confidence in tips—particularly fishing tips. The same native, in showing us the rapids, pointed out several deep caves along the rough path we were compelled to climb, in getting the best view of the rapids.

“Maybe dead man in there,” he said, pointing to the deepest of the caves. “Stay tomorrow, and we’ll look.”

But I could not be persuaded by this tempting offer, and leave tomorrow for a trip that will keep me busy from 6 A.M. until 12 P.M. If anyone is finding fault because I am idle, I hope that day’s work will satisfy them.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22.—Continuing our pleasure trip, we started at 6 o’clock this morning, and traveled almost continuously until midnight—by stage, boat, and railroad train. Our destination was Taumarunui, and when we arrived there at midnight, we left an order with the hotel clerk to be called at 5:30, to catch a boat on the celebrated Waunganui river for Pipiriki.... The first stage of our journey today was by coach to Lake Taupo, seven miles. On the way, we passed several waterfalls and geysers, but as we had been called at 5 o’clock, we were sleepy, and did not much enjoy them. At seven o’clock we were at Taupo, where we took a boat for a ride of twenty-six miles across the lake. There were only five passengers, and the pilot read most of the three hours, looking up from his book occasionally to see that the boat was going right. When we were out an hour, he asked all of us if we were going on by stage. We said we were, whereupon he produced a little cage containing a pigeon. Writing the figure “5” on a thin piece of paper, he fastened this to the bird’s leg by means of a light wire, and the bird was released. This is the means used every day to notify the stage people, eighteen miles away, how many passengers are coming. The bird has been in use two years, and never fails. If the boat has a big load of passengers, two or more stages are made ready, but the day we crossed, one was sufficient. In some islands, a regular carrier-pigeon post is maintained, the pilot told me.... We landed at a little Maori village at 10 A. M., and found a five-horse stage waiting for us, the carrier-pigeon having delivered the message entrusted to it. We picked up several passengers here, and when we started over the mountain, the top of which showed patches of snow, the coach carried fourteen, including the driver. We called at a house in the village and picked up a very fat Maori woman, two children, and two men. The woman said good-by to all the women and girl children in the house by rubbing her forehead against theirs, and considerable time was required for this ceremony. When we finally started, a light rain was falling, which continued until 7 P.M., when we reached the railroad. Three passengers had paid extra for seats with the driver, and all of them were soaked, while those of us on the inside were protected. During the stage ride from 10 A.M. to 7 P.M., we passed through a wild, mountainous country, and saw almost no houses. We stopped twice to change horses, and both times the passengers drank tea in a little hut warmed by a fire in one of the tin fireplaces so common here. The tea was boiled in the fireplaces by the hostlers of the stage company, and we gave them what we pleased. I drank tea four times today: at breakfast, at noon, in the afternoon, and at dinner at 7 o’clock.... Wherever there was a house, the people came out to see the stage go by. At two or three places we saw pigs of the Arkansas razor-back variety; there is no corn here, and pigs do not amount to much. The passengers were all New Zealanders, and they told us they knew we were from the United States as soon as they saw us. They said they could always tell English and Americans. And then we told them we knew they were New Zealanders, and not English, because we had heard them abusing the English. When you see a man who is exactly like an Englishman, but who abuses the English, you may know he is from New Zealand or Australia. A woman and her daughter who were passengers told us New Zealanders always admired Americans; particularly American women. All the passengers, except the Maoris, were making about the same trip we were making, and we had met several of them at different places, and become acquainted. In traveling, it is almost allowable to speak to anyone.... At 7 o’clock in the evening we reached the railroad at Waiora, and waited an hour and twenty minutes for a train to Taumarunui. This is the only night train operated in New Zealand, and connects its two most important cities: Wellington and Auckland.... It is a universal custom at hotels here, when a servant serves you, to say “Thank you.” A waiter will hand you a bill of fare, and you indicate that you will take soup, whereupon the waiter says “Thank you.” When the waiter brings the soup, you say “Thank you.” The people here are much politer to servants than Americans.... Ten minutes before midnight we landed at Taumarunui, which is a switch-engine town; I heard a switch-engine puffing in the yards nearly all night. A town that has a railroad switch-engine is a grade above the ordinary electric-light town.... Soon after we entered the train at Waiora, the conductor entered our car, and asked: “Anyone from Waiora?” Then those of us who had entered the train at that station, handed him our tickets. In America, railway conductors have a way of tagging passengers. I should think it would be easy here to steal a ride. Stations are not called, and there is no train porter, so when we arrived at Taumarunui we were compelled to hunt up the conductor and ask him if that was our station.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23.—The Waunganui river is known as “the Rhine of New Zealand.” We journeyed down this river eleven hours today, and it was the big event of our stay in New Zealand. The Waunganui river is a series of rapids, and during the eleven hours of the journey we were always in a crooked mountain gorge. We saw no farm land, no settlements; nothing but wild mountain scenery, and a rapid, roaring river sometimes not more than forty feet wide. The boat in which we traveled was a very narrow one; not so wide as a street-car, but probably sixty feet long, and supplied with powerful engines. In going down some of the rapids the engines were stopped, and occasionally reversed. The government has spent a great deal of money in improving the river, and the only houses we saw were occupied by river workers. I have made a trip down the St. Lawrence, and I think we passed through one rapids, which was thought to be remarkable; but today we passed through hundreds. And the boats didn’t poke along; they ran like racehorses, and every minute missed great rocks by only a few feet. Probably no other river trip in the world is equal to this one. About 11 A.M. we changed to a boat of a little heavier draught, and about noon we stopped at a houseboat for lunch. This houseboat is a complete hotel, and many people stop there a day or two in the journey up or down—usually down, for very few people make the slow journey upstream. We had forty-six passengers, and this number packed the boat, it was so small. I am certain that every five minutes during the eleven-hour journey, we passed a waterfall. Some of the mountain scenery is really fine, and we were twisting and turning all the time. We knew seven or eight of the passengers, having met them at various places during the present trip. At 6 P.M. we reached Pipiriki, which consists of a fine hotel perched on top of a mountain. It has electric lights and modern conveniences, and is a joy after some of the hotels in the geyser district.... Although the Waunganui is called the Rhine of New Zealand, it is not at all like the Rhine of Germany. It is not so large, and the country through which it passes is very much more rugged. The Rhine is lined with old castles and towns, whereas in traveling down the Waunganui all day you do not see a single town, and only a few cheap houses occupied by river laborers.... The boat on which we were passengers had one very handy employee. He handled baggage, and also served tea in the afternoon. When we stopped for lunch at the houseboat he assisted in waiting on the tables, and when we reached the hotel at Pipiriki he helped wait on the tables. He also assisted with the ropes when the boat landed, which it did a few times, to throw mail out on the bank where there was no town, no houses, and no people in sight. It also delivered a little freight in the same way, and one passenger landed at a lonely place and disappeared in the bush.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24.—We were aroused at 4:30 this morning, and departed at 5:30 to complete the journey down the river to the railroad and the sea. The lower portion of the Waunganui is as interesting as the upper; although we rode in a larger boat, there were as many rapids today as yesterday—the road was covered, but the pilot was compelled to follow it as closely as a chauffeur follows an automobile road. One rapids was so narrow and crooked that the only way to get through was to trust to luck, and bump through. The captain was the pilot in all the critical places, but at least three other men seemed to know the river, and took turns at the wheel. One of them was a Maori dude, with fancy clothes, and every native along the way waved at him. The pilot was also the engineer; the men down below had nothing to do but keep up steam. Beside the pilot was a throttle whereby he shut off steam, reversed, went half speed, or full speed; he did not ring bells for the guidance of an engineer below, but had complete control of the power himself. I never before saw a steamboat so rigged.... Two or three hours after leaving Pipiriki, we began to see evidences of civilization; including a cemetery. For several days we had been in the wilds where a cemetery was not seen. The river still ran through mountains, but we stopped frequently, and took on mail and passengers. At some places the boat ran its nose into the bank for a moment, a deck hand jumped to the shore and grabbed a mail sack hanging on a stick, and then we backed into the stream. At other places we stopped at villages, and took on wool, fruit, passengers, and sheep-dogs. A good sheep-dog is worth $50 in New Zealand. At some of these places passengers on the boat would call out to men ashore and ask them: “Got your wool out yet?” At one lonely place several native women came aboard, and they said good-by to dozens of women at the landing in the peculiar Maori way. When we pulled out we saw those on shore riding up the hills, on horseback, followed by a lot of dogs. There were many native passengers, and they occupied one section of the boat; whether this was a sort of “Jim Crow” arrangement, or whether the natives preferred being together, I do not know. At breakfast I did not see any of the natives at the tables.... We passed a boat coming up, and our captain called out to the pilot: “Water twenty-one, Jake; look out for Wintoni shoal.” We passed the boat on the left, instead of on the right, which is the custom with all traffic here. It was cold on the river early in the morning, and we hugged the smokestack, but by ten o’clock the weather was quite warm.... There were several very small men on board; race-riders. They seemed to have been making the tour of the geyser district, and I judged they were on their way to Wellington, where there will be racing next week. People living in the United States cannot realize how popular horse-racing is out here. Nor can they realize how popular the tea-drinking habit is. Every railroad train stops at frequent intervals, to afford the passengers opportunity to drink tea. At the hotels, when the maids bring us tea early in the morning, and we do not take it, you cannot imagine how astonished they look.... Another impressive thing in this country is the fact that all the people are very polite. I haven’t seen a rude person since arriving in New Zealand, and, in addition, they are all well-dressed and prosperous-looking. I have met one drunken man, but he was polite in spite of the load he carried.... On a boat a few days ago we met a bride and groom, and have been traveling with them since. They had with them every day a little newspaper, printed in a town of which I had never heard, and, as I saw them consulting it frequently, I knew it contained their wedding notice. I managed to get hold of the paper this morning, while they were at breakfast, and read the notice. It was the usual thing. A Miss Ruth Simpson played the wedding march; there were flower girls, a wedding breakfast, etc.; the bride was one of our most amiable young ladies, and the groom one of our most promising young business men; the bride threw her bouquet, and it was caught by one of her bridesmaids: I greatly enjoyed reading the wedding notice of our friends, whom we had come to know very well, and who were very nice. It’s the same old thing all the world over.... At 11 A. M. we passed out of the rapids, and the river became broader. At noon we came to Waunganui, a town of fourteen thousand. Here we took a train for Wellington. The train was packed, and I hate a crowd. The farming country between Waunganui and Wellington is probably as good as there is in New Zealand, which isn’t saying much. Every three or four miles we saw a field of oats or turnips. In between, we saw sheep in hilly pastures. There are more sheep here than I ever dreamed of; and I doubt if there is a black sheep in New Zealand: anyway, I haven’t seen one.... On the train was a father who could take care of a baby, but the mother was perfectly helpless with it.... The dining-car on the train is run by the government, and no doubt the waiters take civil-service examinations. When we reached the dining-car there was almost nothing left, owing to the crowd, but the waiter said he could get us a chop. Here, mutton chops are as common as bacon or ham in the United States.... At 7:20 P.M. we arrived in Wellington, after passing through a number of tunnels, and stopping at many seaside resorts. We went to the Grand Hotel, the best we have encountered since leaving San Francisco. Early tomorrow we shall call on Thos. Cook & Son, tourist agents, and see what they desire us to do next.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 25.—The first thing we do when we reach a strange town is to walk around and look at it, after being comfortably settled in a hotel. Later, we hire a messenger boy, as guide, and go riding. We like Wellington better than we liked Auckland, and we were in love with that town. The Grand Hotel is really excellent, yet the price is only $3.12 a day, which includes three regular meals, supper at 9 P. M., early morning tea, afternoon tea, and room. The house has a good elevator service, electric lights, and plenty of baths. My room looks out on the main street of Wellington, and has a little stone balcony in front. Across the street is the barroom of the Empire Hotel, with two lady bartenders. I amuse myself watching them. They are stylishly dressed, and it is funny to see them step up to the bar and ask a man what he will have.... We swing along the streets in comfortable fashion, and hope that drinking tea four times a day causes us to look Colonial, if not English, but when we step into a store and ask a price, the clerk replies, “Ten and six; that is, two dollars and sixty-two cents.” Which causes us to realize that our gait, our manner, our clothes and our talk are still plainly marked: “American.” We went into a dry-goods store this morning, and Adelaide bought a pair of gloves. The price was three and six (about half the price we would have paid at home), and I gave the clerk what I thought was the exact change. As I walked out, I was thinking the English system of money is easy to learn. When we were in the street, a girl came running after us with a shilling change.... Railroad trains run through one of the busiest streets of Wellington, and this morning we saw a train start for the races. It consisted of half a dozen passenger coaches, and twelve flat cars provided with board seats. One of the passenger cars was a sleeper. This is the capital of the country. Think of the government owning the railways in the United States, and, in Washington, D. C., compelling the people to ride on flat cars. I imagine that “Tax Payer,” and “Citizen,” to say nothing of “Old Soldier,” and “Vox Populi,” would write stinging letters to the newspapers.... There is a paper printed here called “Truth,” and I venture the opinion that it is the biggest liar in the Dominion. The last issue has a leader entitled “Christ—Cæsar—Napoleon.” Under such a title a writer might lie abominably.... In Australia, a Mr. Beeby was recently elected to the legislative assembly against the wishes of the labor unions. Mr. Beeby challenged the right of the labor unions to order his every political act, and become the keeper of his conscience. So he appealed to the people, and told the labor men to go to the devil. They made a tremendous fight against Mr. Beeby, and said he was trying to take bread out of the mouths of starving people, etc., although he was really a very fair and sensible friend of the working class. The result was a surprise; Mr. Beeby won, although by a small majority. The Wellington Times of this morning, speaking of Mr. Beeby’s success, says:

“There is a good deal of hostility to the labor element, because of its disregard of the best traditions of constitutional government.”

It was a fair and square fight between conservative people and the labor unions, and the people won. There is a great deal of the same sentiment everywhere in New Zealand and Australia; the people believe the labor unions have become more exacting than circumstances warrant, and that some day, somewhere, the limit will be reached.... This has been a very enjoyable day, because there are no sights to see. Fortunately Thos. Cook & Son didn’t want us to go to the South Islands to see the glaciers; they say we haven’t time. We have walked about in a leisurely way today, and, living far from the sea, the docks attract us everywhere. This afternoon we engaged in conversation with an officer of a ship sailing to London by way of South America, and he took us all over it. He said sea-travel is safer now than ever before, because of the “Titanic” disaster; that every seaman is more careful.... Last night, two bands went by the hotel. The players were neatly uniformed, and there were at least sixty men in the two organizations. They were Mission bands; the Mission is a rival of the Salvation Army, but a little quieter in its methods. The Salvation Army also has a large band here, and both play in the streets every evening. The papers give advance notice of the location of the concerts, and large crowds gather to hear the music. The bands are very creditable; nothing amateurish about them.... The men who work in the slaughter-houses here are on strike, and the papers of this morning say that the Farmers’ Union has adopted resolutions condemning the slaughter-house employees for failure to accept arbitration.... In this country, when a newspaper prints a telegram, it prints the day and hour the telegram was received, as a guarantee that it was received by wire. If an editor prints a faked telegram, he is liable to fine and imprisonment. The idea isn’t a bad one. The government has lately ordered an investigation of the wireless telegraph business. The people desire to know just what is actually being accomplished by wireless. I shall watch the investigation with interest; I should like to know, too.... Tomatoes are generally sold here at fruit stores. Which revives the old conundrum: “Is the tomato a fruit or vegetable?” ... A place in Wellington is known as “The American Lounge.” It is a soda-water place, and this sign appears in the window: “Coca-Cola; something entirely new in New Zealand.” The soda fountain is a small one-spout affair that a suburban grocer in America would not tolerate.... In one of the suburbs, this afternoon, children followed us, as though we were Chinese. “They are American people,” the children said, apparently not knowing that we could understand what they said. An old gentleman reprimanded the children, and apologized for their conduct.... The race track is twenty miles from Wellington, as there is not enough level land in the vicinity to accommodate a mile track, and most of the people are out there this afternoon. We were walking in the wholesale district at 3 P.M., and, looking in every direction, were able to see only five people; and they were hurrying to the railroad station. Wellington is very hilly, and mountains are only a stone’s-throw from its main streets.... Yesterday a man named James Cole brought an action against his wife, Fanny, because she failed to properly support him. Cole said he was unable to work because of an accident, whereas his wife had a profitable fish-supper business. Counsel asked Cole:

“How high are you able to lift your arm since the accident which you say disabled you?”

Applicant lifted his arm nearly up to his shoulder.

“How far could you lift it before the accident?” counsel for Mrs. Cole asked.

“Oh, up to here,” Mr. Cole replied, holding the arm high over his head. Whereupon the magistrate dismissed the case. All of which appears in the Wellington Times of this morning; in the local news, and not in the joke department.... We have a mandolin orchestra at this hotel, and the leader is an old gentleman who looks like a member of the Supreme Court of the United States whose picture I have often seen, but whose name I have forgotten. He plays to the lady guests as the first violinist does in a Paris café, and is altogether a very interesting character.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 26.—Australia has nothing to show tourists except a few caves; New Zealand has the geyser district, and a glacier or two, but there is nothing of predominant interest in either country, as you will find in Egypt, or India, and in many other countries. The natives here are not interesting; they remind you a good deal of country-town negroes in the United States, although in a way they are superior to the negroes, and superior to our Indians. After the Maoris have seen the stage, the boat or the railroad train go by, they have apparently completed their work for the day. In the old countries, the tourists are interesting; but there are few tourists here: we have seen only New Zealanders and Australians out for a holiday. Of brides and grooms we have seen hundreds; if a woman never gets another one, she usually gets a trip when she is married. We have seen a few Englishmen, but they are usually here looking for opportunity to make money, not to spend it.... Wherever I have seen natives I have detected a peculiar odor. An Auckland woman with whom we traveled in the mountains, says the odor comes from dried shark-meat, which the natives are always eating.... Last night, while looking out of my window at the lady bartenders in the Empire Hotel, directly across the street, a negro man went by. He is the only negro I have seen since leaving home. He was well-dressed, and seemed to be prosperous.... The streets are somewhat narrow in Wellington, and the Empire Hotel, across the way, greatly interests me; I am more familiar with its guests than with the guests of the Grand. And as soon as darkness sets in, I can see the lady bartenders; the electric lights in the barroom render their every act visible. To me it is indescribably funny to see a woman working on the inside of a bar. Last night a patron gave one of the two a bouquet of flowers, and she handled it as gracefully as a society queen.... In the United States, a hotel or restaurant waiter looks almost as tough as a hackdriver, but here they are fine-appearing men. Many of them are elderly; they seem to have spent their lives as waiters. The man who waits on us in the dining-room of the Grand might be a congressman, so far as looks go, and I have never before known an equally capable man of his calling. How the Grand affords it all at three dollars a day, I cannot understand. The price is 12 and 6, which appears to be $3.12 in our money, but it is really $3, since a shilling is worth only twenty-four cents. The Grand is the best hotel in Wellington, and probably in the Dominion. Wellington is full of hotels, and probably the competition is so strong that the Grand is compelled to keep its prices down.... New Zealand pays a good deal of attention to tourists, and the government extensively advertises the hot lakes and the glaciers; it also has a bureau for selling travelers tickets, and owns resorts, boat lines, etc. But it pays little attention to immigration, as Australia does. Australia does much more for immigrants than the United States, giving them cheap fares to the country, reduced freight rates, etc., and when they arrive, special attention is paid them by a government department created for that purpose. The United States gets more immigrants than any other country, without inducements of any kind on the part of the government: news of the country paying the best wages, and offering the best inducements, will find its way everywhere.... Wirth’s Greatest Show on Earth is billed here. One of its stars is Hillary Long, “the talk of America,” although I do not remember to have heard of him there. Another of Wirth’s stars is Young Buffalo Bill, who competes with Australian cowboys in mastering wild horses and cattle.... The offices of the New Zealand government are housed in what is said to be the largest wooden building in the world. Wellington has many fine structures of stone, but the government buildings were constructed years ago, and are mainly of wood.... This is as sleepy a town on Sunday as I have ever visited. This morning we went down to breakfast at 8:30, and dined alone. At noon, the maid had not yet cleaned up our rooms. But it is just as bad across the street, at the Empire Hotel, into the rooms of which I can look. The beds were not made there at noon, either; indeed, in one room a man was still in bed. The lady bartenders at the Empire are not on duty today; the blinds are down in the bar, and the lady bartenders are probably patronizing some of the numerous excursions we saw advertised in the morning papers. The day is not only Sunday, but rain began falling in the afternoon, and we had no other amusement than watching the bored guests at the Empire.... The maid came in at 2 P.M. to clean up my room, and a fine lot of gossip she brought. She says that one of the girls employed in the office of the Grand died last night, and that the hotel force is demoralized. The girl’s body was taken to the morgue this morning, and the maid thinks the papers will be full of it in the morning. When a man dies, it seems to be regular, but when a woman dies there is a chance for suspicion, particularly if she has been to Sydney three months before on a vacation. The maid also says that the lady bartenders at the Empire, across the street, kiss their customers. Lady bartenders, as a class, according to the maid, do not stand very high socially, a statement I can easily accept.... The maid says an American stopped at the Grand several months ago, and every time he met her, he said: “Go to h—l.” I did not recognize this as an American trait: to tell ladies, without provocation, to go to h—l.... In New Zealand or Australia (or in England, for that matter) the first thing an American notices is the queer pronunciation of words by the residents. I have mentioned this before, but mention it again because I have just come across this statement by Rudyard Kipling:

“The American I have heard up to the present is a tongue as distinct from English as Patagonian.”

From which I imagine that our pronunciations also jar on English ears. I believe I can take their own dictionary, and convince the English that they do not obey its rules of pronunciation. There is not the slightest authority in any English dictionary for many of their pronunciations. The pronunciation of the English people is arbitrary; there is no authority for much of it, as there is no authority for the cockney dialect. At one place on this trip we met two old-maid high-school teachers, and they almost spoke good English. And this is a rule that may be depended upon: the educated English have a better pronunciation than the uneducated. The pronunciation of Americans is nearly always the same, but the English do not themselves use the same pronunciations. Perhaps it is an intonation or quality of the voice, or an inflection, but it is a fact that frequently an American understands them with difficulty. For several days we traveled with an English barrister, a very polite gentleman, and we frequently sat with him at hotel, steamboat and dining-car tables. Half the time we could not understand him. And he found equal difficulty in understanding us, unless we spoke slowly and distinctly. Kipling says the American language has nothing in common with English except the auxiliary verbs, the name of the Creator, and damn.

MONDAY, JANUARY 27.—Although New Zealand is supposed to be an English colony, there are no English soldiers here. A few soldiers are seen in Wellington, but they belong to New Zealand regiments. The young man who showed us about today is seventeen years old, and what we would call an A. D. T. messenger boy. But the telegraph business is a government monopoly here, and this young man is a government employee. There is a mild system of compulsory military service. The young man says he belongs to a military company of postoffice and telegraph employees, and that they drill one hour every week. All young men are compelled to belong to a similar company, from fourteen to twenty-five years of age. They compose a military reserve, and never go into actual camp. New Zealand also has a navy, which is about as much of a joke as its army. Australia, being larger, has a larger establishment, but the system is the same: New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania are exactly alike so far as politics, sheep, and labor unions are concerned. Tasmania is a little place, but it has mighty questions to settle. The Tasmania legislative assembly has been in a deadlock several years, and none of the big questions could be settled. An election was held recently, to break the deadlock; and again the assembly is a tie. Politically, the colonies remind one a little of Cuba, where the political pot boils rather more steadily than anywhere else in the world.... The real event of today has been the arrival of Dr. Beeson, of Chicago, with whom we traveled three weeks on the “Sonoma.” I seem to have known him always; he is my dearest friend, and the meeting apparently pleased him as much as it did me.... In the celebration following my meeting with Dr. Beeson, we went down into the Grand barroom, where we found two bars, exactly alike, on opposite sides of a big room. An old maid known as Polly served us; a younger woman called ‘Arriet presided at the bar across the room. Polly was very amiable, and talked to us about our trip; I suppose she has been a bartender ever since she was eighteen, and attractive, and that was a long time ago. It will surprise you to know that she reminded me of a school teacher; she was as well-behaved as a school teacher, and had a bossy way that is always associated in my mind with the school-room. The Doctor and I talked of going over to see the lady bartenders at the Empire, but Polly coaxed us out of the notion. Liquor is sold here almost entirely by women; the custom of barmaids is more general in New Zealand, I am told, than in England.... Every morning and evening I buy a newspaper. The news is mainly from London, or local; I have not seen a telegram from the United States. Which is not so surprising: you might read the American papers a long time without seeing a telegram from New Zealand.... Wellington has a fine street-car system; considerably better than St. Joseph, Mo., a city of about the same size. One line runs through a tunnel under a mountain to a bathing-beach; another climbs one of the great hills, where are located many fine residences. There are several short cable lines running up the steep mountains. In addition to this means of communication, there are many boats running around and across the harbor, to bathing-beaches and suburbs. Wellington is as fine a town as St. Joseph, and the suburbs of Wellington look better. The streets and roads here are superior to those in the Missouri city, and I saw a grocery store here today that St. Joseph cannot equal.... There is a probability of a strike among the cab-drivers here. The drivers are demanding that passengers handle their own baggage. The city has taken a hand, and decided that it is the duty of cab-drivers to place the baggage of passengers on their cabs; whereupon the Cab Drivers’ Union inquired, in a resolution, “Why should not passengers handle their own luggage?” A district delegate has arrived from Auckland, and last night delivered a fiery speech about the starving poor, the insolent rich, the disposition of capital to wring the last drop of blood from the people, etc., and it will be known in a day or two whether I shall be compelled to carry my own trunks when I go to the ship.... This town is known as Windy Wellington, because the wind blows so steadily. One story is that you may always tell a Wellington man, wherever he may be: when he turns a street corner, he grabs his hat, to keep it from blowing away. Wellington people also have a story on Sydney; they say that when they visit that city they pin a tag on their coats, which reads: “I am much pleased with your harbor.” Sydney people are very proud of their harbor, and Auckland and Wellington are very jealous, as both the last named cities have beautiful harbors, though neither is as large as that at Sydney.... A gentleman who sits at our table at the hotel lived for six months at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and thinks it a very fine town. He lives in New Zealand now, but Lancaster pleased him very much. Chicago scared him; he was there one night, and the next morning the papers reported six murders. As soon as Dr. Beeson arrived, Chicago had a more capable defender, and I withdrew, to enjoy the scrimmage.... Chinese are admitted to New Zealand on payment of $1,500 per head, and a good many of them run fruit and vegetable stores here.... As the maid predicted, the Monday morning papers mentioned the death at the Grand Hotel Saturday night, but they handled the item very cautiously, saying that the circumstances were suspicious, and that an inquest was necessary.... No doubt the people at the Empire are much exercised; unless I am much mistaken, the people of the Empire are saying: “That rotten outfit across the street is getting what it deserves.” You can’t expect anyone to be fair with his rival in business.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28.—We took a long street-car ride this morning, and paid sixteen cents for one journey which would have cost only five cents in an American city. But you can ride a short distance for two cents. The fare increases two cents per section. Whether our plan of five cents for a street-railway ride, long or short, is better or worse than this, I do not know.

There are no transfers here; if you travel on three different lines, you pay three fares.... Every morning our waiter at the hotel brings us hot cakes, although we do not order them. We discovered the reason today: on the bill of fare they are called “hot cakes, American style.” It is the waiter’s way of announcing that he knows we are Americans.... When you order soft-boiled eggs here, they are brought to you in the shell, and you eat them out of egg cups. This morning I asked the waiter to break mine in a glass, which he did, but he also put in pepper and salt, and stirred them up.... This has been a very chilly day, and the Wellington people are going about wearing overcoats and straw hats. A woman on the street-car informed us that today has been as cold as the weather ever gets here, at any season. At one of the beaches we saw the surf rolling in a very boisterous and menacing way, as the wind was blowing almost a gale. But flowers are in bloom, and vegetables growing in gardens. The vegetable gardens here are in the hands of Chinese, and are wonderfully neat; almost as wonderful as the gardens about Paris, where the gardeners remove the original dirt, and make a new soil.... We hear complaints everywhere of the labor unions. On a street-car today we engaged in conversation with an elderly woman who said she was born in Wellington, and who complained bitterly of the unions, which cause constant disturbances in all branches of business. This was surprising to me, in New Zealand, where we have heard everything is so amiable. I hear the same thing every time I talk with New Zealand people. “It is too much of a good thing,” they say. Possibly it is like our tariff: originally a good thing, it has been overdone, and all of us are now compelled to pay tribute in the shape of a heavy tax.... When we began talking with the woman, she said: “I take it that you are Americans.” We always hear that.... We have discovered that among its other attractions, the Grand Hotel has a roof garden. Even the Chicago doctor is surprised at the excellence of the hotel; and the price is only $3 a day each, including meals and rooms. We have concluded that the necessities of life, on an average, are about one-quarter cheaper here than in the United States. While there are no great tracts of farming land in the vicinity of Wellington or Auckland, near Christchurch, on the other island, there are said to be plains one hundred miles long. People here say that mutton is the one meat they never tire of; and mutton is very plentiful and very cheap.... The New Zealander who sits at our table is a very bold man, to hear him talk. I told him of my experience with snoring men, on the “Maheno,” and he says that under such circumstances he would have raised a row with the disturbers. But I think that possibly he is like many others I have known: a great talker, rather than a great hero. He tells an amusing story of a friend he once invited to his home for a visit of a fortnight. The friend turned out to have the loudest and most disagreeable snore ever heard in New Zealand, and no one in the house slept during the two weeks the visitor was there.... The tipping evil is not as great in New Zealand as it is in many places; the servants here have heard of the custom, but they do not mob travelers who fail to fee them satisfactorily.... The greatest need at present, in all parts of the world, is a library of books of simple information, simply written. Today I bought a book on Africa, by Sir H. H. Johnston. The introduction is interesting, but the remaining hundreds of pages contain a lot of technical information that no one wants. My impression is that Sir H. H. Johnston wrote the introduction, and the remaining pages were taken from old books on the subject. Cyclopedias are made in the same way. Some time ago I read the confession of a cyclopedia editor. He says such books are full of errors, because of the habit of copying, and that there is too little independent investigation. He relates that as an editor he once invented a man, a “noted clergyman,” and sent a “story” about him to the printers. The “story” passed the scrutiny of all the other editors, and was about to be made up into the pages of the cyclopedia, when the joker took it out. That is the way historical books are printed; they are too long, very dull, full of errors, written in a ponderous style that repels readers, and lacking in the simplicity and terseness necessary for the understanding of the average reader. There are several “libraries” of “universal knowledge,” and not one of them is half as good, as useful or as entertaining as it could have been made. The lack in all these books is simplicity; the professors write in fear of the criticism of other professors, and not for busy people. In this book on Africa, about all I found of interest was a statement that the Australoid type of man is almost certainly the parent of the white man in Europe and Asia. The Australoid, represented at present by the indigenous population of Australia (a chocolate-colored people, rather than black) comes nearest of all living men to the basal stock of our race, and behind him lies a long vista of semi-humanity till apehood is reached. This was a new statement to me.... The human genus was evolved somewhere in Asia, most probably in India, according to the best authority. This was a long time ago; human remains at least five hundred thousand years old have been found in the Rhine basin near Heidelberg, and it is believed the race is much older in Asia. But the original man was a black man, or a yellow man; the white man originated much later, and, according to Sir H. H. Johnston, he originated in Australia. So I am visiting the home of my remote ancestors. While man is very old, he ceased only twenty-five or thirty thousand years ago—this is only a guess of scientists, but the best information we have—to live in an absolutely savage condition as a mere hunter of other animals. The present civilized man gradually developed from a start made probably thirty thousand years ago. It was the white man who made this start toward civilization, and he originated in Australia, if Sir H. H. Johnston knows what he is talking about. The white man has always been an adventurer, and, in the course of ages, spread over the earth.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29.—The New Zealander who sits at our table, and who lived awhile at Lancaster, Pa., said at breakfast this morning:

“The people of the United States are the smartest in the world. No doubt about it. In everything worthy and desirable, they are ahead of any other people.”

This man was born in England, and lived in London many years, but is lately living in New Zealand. He believes the “Pennsylvania Dutch” he knew at Lancaster to be the best type of people he ever knew, and regrets that all the people of the United States are not more like them.... This gentleman also showed us how the English and Scotch eat oatmeal porridge. They salt it, but never use sugar. In the left hand they hold a cup of milk, and into this they dip a spoonful of porridge before eating it.... It seems there was a blizzard yesterday; the thermometer got down to fifty-six above. But we went about in our usual summer clothing, and did not know it was a blizzard until this morning’s papers appeared.... In the botanical garden, this morning, I believe I saw the finest display of flowers I have ever seen. You hear much of the famous gardens of Japan, but I have never seen a Japanese garden as beautiful as that I saw this morning. The Japanese gardens are grotesque rather than beautiful. On the way back to town we visited a big department store, and remained an hour, watching the crowds. Doctor Beeson and I followed Adelaide around among the crowds of women, and enjoyed the experience. There was a special sale on, and postal cards had been reduced to a cent each. The store was a big one, but not nearly so large as the big ones in Kansas City. All the clerks were girls, and it was about the usual thing in special sales, except that prices were in pounds, shillings and pence.... In the public places here, we see this sign very frequently: “Citizens, protect your own property.” That is, everything belongs to the people, therefore why destroy anything? Some people are natural vandals, but people of a little culture and refinement never are.... In New Zealand, a woman has no interest in her husband’s real-estate. If a man desires to transfer a piece of real property here, his wife’s signature to the deed is not necessary, as is the case in the United States. Still women have full suffrage in New Zealand.... Not only the talk is unintelligible here at times, but I see advertisements in the English newspapers I can’t understand. Here is an exact copy of an advertisement in the Wellington Post of this date:

WANTED—A General. Apply Mrs. Focke, 210 The Terrace.

If you know what Mrs. Focke wants, you know more than I do. Here is another advertisement from the same newspaper:

FOR SALE—Butchery business; going concern; average weekly killing, 6 bodies and 30 small. Victor E. Smith, Box 59, Fielding.

I haven’t the remotest notion what the advertisement means.... The newspapers here, of course, have taken after the street-railway company. They demand a universal fare of two cents, instead of two cents a section. It seems impossible to run a newspaper anywhere without abusing the street-railway. One correspondent of The Post says the street-car company is entitled to take in only enough to pay actual running expenses, as the increasing value of the property is profit enough.... At luncheon today, our waiter at the Grand Hotel brought me an extra dish. “American pork and beans,” he announced triumphantly. They never let me forget for a moment that I am an American, or that they have caught me at it.... The dry-goods men here are as big talkers as they are anywhere. In The Post of this afternoon, James Smith, Limited, offers a special sale in summer goods. Here is one price he quotes:

“Ladies’ one-piece washing frocks, in various colors, good value at 18s. 6d.; carry your choice away tomorrow at 5s. 11d.”

It seems that any sane woman would know that an article now offered at 5s. 11d. (or $1.42) was never good value at 18s. 6d. (or $4.62). If James Smith ever sold an article at $4.62 and has now cut it to $1.42, he is a robber, and no woman should patronize him. Yet his store will be crowded with women tomorrow, and many of them will buy dry goods they do not need, at prices that afford James Smith, Limited, a fair profit. The manner in which smart merchants fool the women with special sales should receive attention at the next meeting of Congress.... Bob Fitzsimmons, the prizefighter, came from New Zealand, and I think he is rather more popular at home than Melba is in Australia, where she was born. Indeed, I have heard Melba “picked at” a good deal, while Fitz is generally pointed to with pride.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 30.—A hair-cut and shave at the best shop in Wellington costs twenty-four cents. If a man buys a ticket, and pays in advance, for $1.50 he can get a shave every morning for a month, and one hair-cut.... On my way to the barber’s this morning I saw this sign: “Mrs. Jew, private hotel.” Here is another sign I saw: “Jerusalem & Son, jewelers and New Zealand green-stone merchants.” While waiting in the barber shop I saw this advertisement in a newspaper: “Wanted—A Rabbiter; also a saw doctor. Apply to F. P. Welch, Masterton.” ... My friend who lived for a time in Lancaster, Pa., and who so greatly admires the “Pennsylvania Dutch,” told of a funny experience this morning. When he first landed in the United States he went into a barber shop, to be shaved. The barber asked him if he wanted a shampoo. The New Zealander, thinking that this was merely a politeness, said he did. Then the barber asked him if he would have a face massage, and the New Zealander accepted that offer, as well as several others, all the while thinking of the politeness of the American barbers. Finally, when the barber presented his bill for $2.90, there was a row, and the New Zealander denounced us all as robbers.... This New Zealander, whom I shall call Mr. A., was very indignant when I told him about the snoring man on the ship, and has been telling ever since what should be done to a man who travels about to disturb his fellow-men. “A man who snores,” said Mr. A., “should remain at home.” Mr. A. is a nervous man himself, and believes that a snoring man should in some way be prohibited. I noticed that Dr. Beeson, my friend from Chicago, did not fully accept Mr. A.’s opinion, and, when we are alone, the Doctor is disposed to rake Mr. A. over the coals. This has convinced me that the Doctor is a snoring man, so at nearly every meal I induce Mr. A. to abuse the man who is so impolite as to go to bed in a room with two others and snore all night. The Doctor and Mr. A. were at first quite friendly, but lately they quarrel most of the time. “That man,” the Doctor said to me today, and referring to Mr. A., “is getting on my nerves.” The Doctor frequently comes up to my room to smoke a cigar, and sometimes I send out for a second cigar, that I may enjoy the aroma of the tobacco, but this is the only weak thing I do, so far as my resolution to quit tobacco is concerned. I no longer temporize; I do not chew toothpicks, or gum, or plug tobacco; I have quit off short, and find it easier. If you are trying to quit tobacco, quit entirely, and do not aggravate yourself with cardamon seed, cloves, no-tobac, or anything else.... I am going away tomorrow, but Mr. A. and the Doctor will remain another week, and after I am gone, and no longer able to keep them apart, I expect them to have a fight, about snoring.... The Doctor is going home by way of South America direct, and will round Cape Horn. He said last evening, while smoking in my room: “Well, I now have absolutely nothing to do for forty-eight days, except to send one cablegram at Buenos Aires.” His statement was a very good illustration of the idleness of travelers. He does not like traveling by sea, but says it does him good, although he does not observe the good effect until he has been at home some time. He will be nineteen days at sea, without sight of land; an experience I will have between Australia and South Africa.... An Englishman I met here today was laughing at Americans because they call one horse a “team.” He was also amused because Americans eat pie in the middle of a meal. That is the way many of the stories about Americans originate: they are made up. I have lived in America considerably more than half a century, and never knew anyone to refer to one horse as a “team,” or eat pie in the middle of a meal.... There is a young man staying at this hotel who doesn’t seem to know much. “I don’t believe,” said Mr. A. today, “that he is a full shilling.” Meaning, “I don’t believe he has good sense.” This young fellow is a “remittance man;” he has a rich father in England, and receives a remittance every month—he is kept in New Zealand in the hope that he will get killed, or drink himself to death.... The officers of small ships, since the big “Titanic” went down, frequently ask travelers: “Well, are you satisfied now that a big ship can sink?” Sailors, like other men, are jealous.... A traveling Englishman is never satisfied unless he shows his pajamas all over a ship or hotel. This morning, at 7:20, I left my room to go down on the street for a walk before breakfast. In the hall I found an Englishman, dressed in pajamas only, quietly drinking tea from a tray held by a maid.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31.—At 4:20 this afternoon we left the Grand Hotel, and went on board the “Maunganui,” advertised to sail for Sydney at 5. The Chicago doctor went with us, and said he should be very lonesome after our departure. He says he intends to amuse himself by trimming up Mr. A., the gentleman who lived awhile at Lancaster, Pa. This gentleman has very positive notions about everything, particularly about Americans, and the Doctor says he intends to talk the Chicago language to him after we go. “I didn’t like to say anything rough while Miss Adelaide was at the table,” the Doctor said, “but I’ll be mad anyway, because of your going, and he’ll hear from me.” In addition to his liberal notions about punishing men who snore, Mr. A. “makes up” stories about Americans. He says, for example, that when he was in Chicago, the hotel bell-boy who guided him to his room took hold of his coat, looked at it critically, and said: “What funny clothes you Englishmen wear.” The Doctor is certain no such thing ever happened, at Chicago or elsewhere, and proposes to say so to the hero of the incident.... The “Maunganui” is a large ship, nearly new, but instead of two men in my room I found three. The ship has two parlors, very large and fine, the floors covered with Turkish rugs, but its staterooms are very small, and most of them are provided with four beds; and extra beds are made in the dining-room. There are twice as many passengers on the ship as there should be; there are almost as many at the second sitting in the dining-saloon as at the first.... Very much to our surprise, Mr. A. came down to see us off, and, on hearing that I was to occupy a room with three others, said he wouldn’t stand it; that there was a way of avoiding such disagreeable things, and that he always found it. The Doctor nudged me, and, when the row starts, this big talk will probably come up, also. Mr. A. says he has already spoken to the head waiter at the Grand, and given him notice that our places at his table must be taken by pleasant people.... Owing to an extra amount of freight, the ship did not get away until 7 o’clock; the Doctor and Mr. A. left at 6, and, the last we saw of them, they seemed to be getting along amicably.... We finished dinner in time to go on deck and see the ship leave the harbor. A heavy wind had been blowing several days, and we expected bad weather outside, but in this we were disappointed; the sea was as calm as I have ever seen it, and we walked the decks until ten o’clock. Adelaide is not so lucky this trip, and has three women in her room.... The piano-playing began within an hour after dinner, and most of the players were young men. There are more amateur musicians in this section, probably, than in any other part of the world.... Two of the passengers, young Englishmen, are wearing smoking-jackets with their initials embroidered on the left arm. It is an entirely new idea, and it does not seem improbable that other Englishmen will adopt it.... Travel between New Zealand and Australia is enormous. The boats of the Union Steamship Co. are always crowded. And, in saying your prayers at night, ask for a special curse on the Union Steamship Co., as well as on the Standard Oil Co., and the Eastman Kodak Co. It is a monopoly, and does just as it pleases; and it pleases to put four men in a room nine by ten feet, which I regard as a greater outrage than that Decoration day, or Arbor day, or Flag day, are not more generally observed.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1.—I have spent this day in bed, seasick. Early this morning we ran into a rough sea, and not one passenger in twenty appeared at breakfast. Fortunately, the three others in my room are very polite gentlemen, but this did not prevent them from being ill, and four sick men in a room nine by ten feet, with one small window, and that closed, is not pleasant. In our room there is not so much as a chair to sit on, and not as many hooks as one man requires for his clothing, on retiring; I have no hooks at all in my berth, and, when I went to bed, was compelled to pile my clothes on the bed, or under it. There is one washbowl for four men, and, after two have used it, the water in this runs out. And this on the largest and finest ship sailing out of New Zealand. And I paid $5 in addition to the usual tariff, in order that I might have better than the average first-class passenger. I have never before seen four persons placed in a room on a steamship; it occasionally happens that the sofa is used for a third passenger, when a ship is badly crowded, but on the Atlantic this is rare; passengers won’t stand it. But here, six are often placed in first-class cabins, and there does not seem to be much protest. The newspapers are always abusing the railroads, which actually supply very good accommodations; I wonder they do not have something to say about the steamships. The two parlors on the “Maunganui” must be 100 feet long, and as broad as the ship itself; yet they are rarely occupied by more than a dozen, while four people are forced to occupy a room nine by ten. The smoking-room is a fine apartment, and the halls are wide and airy, but the cabins are disgracefully small. If an American is unwise enough to travel, he should not visit this part of the world, where the ships are all small, and where there does not seem to be the slightest protest against four or six in a cabin. The new and fast ships on the Atlantic travel from New York to Queenstown in almost the time required to travel from Australia to New Zealand, for the ships here are slow as well as small. The distances here are great; in Europe, a trip of seven hours, which includes crossing the English channel, takes you from London to Paris. A night takes you from Paris to Switzerland, and another night to Rome. All the big sights there are comparatively close together; but the time from San Francisco to Australia is three weeks, and, if you go by boat from Sydney, the time to South Africa is four weeks. If you have a notion to visit this part of the world, give it up. The people here are always polite, but it is a country an American will find himself familiar with. The Maori wars in New Zealand were like our Indian wars, and the bush-rangers in Australia were like our Western cattle thieves, gamblers, and gun-men. There is nothing picturesque here, as there is in Japan, which may be reached from San Francisco in four days’ less time than is required to reach Australia. Besides, very large ships sail from San Francisco to Japan and China, whereas only small ships sail from San Francisco to Australia or New Zealand.... It is my experience that there is always something unpleasant about a ship. Every ship has some peculiarity of motion at sea, and one trip does not accustom you to another. I waited a week in New Zealand in order to cross in the big “Maunganui,” but the worst spell of seasickness I ever had was in one of the “Maunganui’s” rooms. And three other gentlemen, all experienced travelers, joined me in it, and we grunted, and growled, and swore all day. I refer to this ship as a big one; its tonnage is 7,800; a boat twice as large is considered rather small on the Atlantic. And the idea that the Pacific is smooth and the Atlantic violent, is a fiction. Both are violent at times, and one is not much worse than the other. This is the most favorable season, and we have had much bad weather.... My part of stateroom 15, for which I paid a stiff price, is about as big as a coffin. Next thing, they will put a cot in the space between the four beds, and sell it to a silly man who thinks there is joy in traveling, and discovers his mistake after actually trying it. I am as finicky and fussy as an old maid when it comes to sleeping, but my indignation over four in a room does me no good; no one else seems to object to it. I suppose I will next draw a room for six; but I don’t care—I should as soon have the whole ship’s company in with me as three.... One is treated better everywhere than at sea. In order to travel comfortably, a man should be married, and have his wife with him. Then he could have her in a room with him, and impose on her, as usual.... A woman traveling incognito, and occupying my bed on this ship, would not be shocked by the three other men in the room. They are polite, clean, decent, and considerate. They are Australian commercial travelers, and this morning one of them told an “American story,” for my benefit. A man was standing on a street corner in Chicago, vigorously puffing a big cigar. A good man approached him, and said: