So we spent Saturday in quite a whirl, but Sunday we kept for just ourselves, as it was our last day with Colonel Deane. And then, after we had all said good-bye a dozen times on Sunday evening, because our train left so early in the morning, the Man of Comfort calmly got into our birdcage on Monday morning and announced that he was coming to the Bluff to “see the last of us!”
Mrs Greendays and I were being paid out now for our ungrateful and ungallant homesickness! It was really a wrench to say good-bye to this lovely land of the April face, and vainly, alas! we wished for one more month,—one more week,—one more day! But the train rushed relentlessly on, it did not even dawdle at the little stations as all the other expresses had done, and we felt sadder and sadder as each emerald field and hill and vale, each sparkling stream and peaceful lake that we passed took us nearer and nearer to the boat that was waiting to carry us out of sight of it all.
“It is a pity that you could not have spent at least six months out here!” said Colonel Deane. “As it is you have only an impressionist idea of New Zealand to carry away with you. The best of the cities lies in their surroundings, which of course there has not been time to see, and then the places you have had to miss altogether! The Bay of Islands is a dream of loveliness, and the kauri forests up there are something entirely different to anything of the kind in the world. And Napier too,—I wish you could have seen Napier. It is such a pretty little town, and the district is one of the finest we have, with most undoubtedly the very best climate in the country. I don’t consider that anyone has seen New Zealand until they have been on a station at shearing time, inspected a milk-factory when the farmers were bringing their milk in, seen the gum-digging, and watched the kauri logs come down the great rivers.”
Mrs Greendays laughed, and said,
“You would not give us a certificate like those they are selling to visitors at the Exhibition, then,—‘This is to certify that has visited New Zealand.’”
“Oh, visited!” he answered, laughing too. “But seriously, it is nearly as,—as inadequate, to say you have been to Kimberley and seen neither the diamonds nor the mines as to come out here and see none of the industries that make the country. The woollen mills, where they make the rugs and clothing and blankets, the flax-mills, the frozen meat works, the timber, gum, gold, butter, wool,—all these are as much New Zealand as the scenery, and to go away without seeing them is as unsatisfactory as it would be to see the Exhibition for instance, from the opposite side of the river, without ever entering the building.”
“Well, I am quite content to take the internal machinery of the country for granted!” said Captain Greendays. “But I do regret coming away without a single shot at the deer! It would have been worth something to carry away a few good pairs of antlers, instead of a story no one will believe about a chap called Pelorus Jack!”
