bracken and manuka scrub. Twenty years ago there was scarcely a hoof in the district, and now my host sells often in one transaction over six hundred head of the finest fat beasts a dealer could pick up anywhere.
Everybody tells me "things are awfully depressed in New Zealand." Certainly I could see no signs of this depression in Wanganui. The signs were absent from Auckland. They were not visible in Napier, and in almost every village on our route we saw only evidences of industry, activity, and progress. Even in Wellington, the much-bewailed depression eluded us still. If this be "the awfully depressed state of things " so constantly bemoaned, then New Zealand, when things are brisk and lively, must have been about the friskiest community and the liveliest country to live in, that all history makes any mention of.
We took passage to Wellington in a little coasting steamer, yclept the Stormbird. The steward was really very hospitable and kind, and made a state-room for myself and wife out of the little smoking-room. We were so close to the machinery, that on the experience of that one night, I might surely set up as an authority on clangour and clanking for life.
We sailed in the cheerful company of a dangerous lunatic under charge of a constable. There were also a goodly company of passengers. The case of the lunatic aptly illustrates a phase of journalistic practice which is, alas! too common in
