News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1894-09-20

''The Terraoes"-A Country Full of Food
For Artists and Scientists.
Copyright, Louis Klopsch, ls94l
CHRIsTCHURCH, New Zealand, July
3l.-Excellent and superb as are the
women of New Zealand more good
women are needed here. In most places
where have lived or travelled women
are in blessed majority, and it seems
that the Lord likes them better than
men, because he has made more of them.
There is in most places a surplus of
good womanhood, and they therefore do
not get full appreciation. But New
Zealand is an exception. In this colony
there are 90, 900 less women than men.
This will by circumstances be adjusted.
There ought certainly to be as many
women as men in every land, for every
man is entitled to a good wife, and
every woman is entitled to a good hus-
band. The difficulty is that war and
rum kill so many men that the man in
tended for the woman's lifetime part
nership is apt to lie in the soldiers
grave trench or in the druhkard's ditch.
In the paradisaical and perfect state
the womanhood equaled the manhood,
for there was one of each kind. The
women in New Zealand have already
done well, for while in the United
States and Europe the women are dis
cUssing in parlors and ON the platforms
how they shall get their rights at the
{ ballot box that castle has already been
stormed and taken by the women here.
After awhile the brave sisterhoods in
the United States and Great Britain
will band together, and from the crowd
ed parlors where so many languish in
hamilton and inoccupation they will
make a crusade to these parts of the
earth, where their presence would be
hailed and their opportunities aug
mented.
The theory that men must go into new
countries alone and establish themselves
in mines, in mechanism or merchandise
and then send for their families to join
them is an overdone theory. The wives
and daughters and sisters had better
come along with their husbands, IA
theirs and brothers. Instead of their being
surplus of men in the colonies, there
ought to be a surplus of women out of
which to get the supply of maiden aunts
those guardian angels of the commu-
nifty who are at home in the whole cir
Gle of kindred, the confidant of the
young, and the comfort of the old, and
the benediction of all.
Not only is there room in New Zea-
land for more good womanhood, but
there is room for moro artists and natu-
ralists.
Hero arc mountains 5000, 10000,
1900, IL, 900 feet high waiting for
some one to take their photographs, and
while most of the mountains of the
earth stand stolid and statuesque and
without varieties of posture some of
these change their shape and altitude
under volcanic suggestion, as the man
in the Photographic gallery at the artists
suggestion changes from side face to
full face or from frown to smile, and
one day a mountain turns clear round,
or from standing posture sits down
with heavy plunge, or crevice opens
between the cheeks of the hill-a wide
open mouth, full of laughter or threat
The changes in the mountain ranges
are enough to set q geolOgist wild
with interest or send him running
up and down these attitudes with crow
bar to dig, or hammer to strike, or tape
line to measure. On a night in June,
1885, the mountains of Tarawera and
Rotomahana, New Zealand, had grand
froltc. For many years tourists had gone
to visit the terraces, as they were
called-ancient forms of volcanic erup-
ton.
step above step of pumice and lava
reaching from earth toward heaven, but
some of the steps of the stairs so and
100 feet high-not so much a Jacobs
ladder as an omnipOtent stairway, up
and down which walked all the splen-
doris and majesties and grandeurs and
radiances Of day and night and sunshine
and tempest, of summer and winter, of
decades and centuries and ages. These
steps seemed to be made out of pearls,
prisms, petritied hyacinth, lily and vio-
let and all laid out as with a divine
geometry Such curve, such bosses OF
exquisiteness, such ascents and descents,
bewildering with almost supernatural
glories. Masonry smoothed by invisible
trowels, walls regulated by invisible
plumb lines, colors put on by invisible
pencils, sculpture cut by invisible CHS
els. On the night of June g. 1885, the
moon was passing into the second quar-
ter when, 10 minutes after 2o'clock, the
earth shook and mountains erupted.
Standing 10, IL, IA miles off the people
felt the shock and saw the ascent of the
steam column and the redhot rocks and
the volcanic ash and scoria and the
smoke, looking like vast pine tree, ac-
cording to the statements Of the poetic,
but like an umbrella or mushroom, &C
cording to the description of the rustic.
Those who lived near the base of the
hills did not survive to tell the tale of
the catastrophe. The detonations were
heard $50 miles away. That was can
honading in which the batteries were
touched off by hidden dynamics. Such
a combination of wrath and splendor
was never before seen in New Zealand.
1t seemed as if all the hyenas of rage
were snarling at all the famingoes Of
beauty. The lake Kissed as with ten
thousand serpents when the hot bombs
Of the mountain dropped into it.