Capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1893-1895, 1894-09-20
REAL WONDERLAND.
Or. TALMAee's ENTHUSIASTIC Ap-
.MlRATloa OF NEW ZEALAND.
Good Womanhood, Grand M ountains, Beau
tful Flowers and Eirds-Tic Tragedy on
"Thc Terraces"-A Country run g., Food
For Artists nnd Scientists.


For Artists md Scientists.
Copyright. Louis Klopsch. lsni.1
CER1sTcHURCH, New Zealand, July
8l.-Excellent and superb as are the
women Of New zeala-d more good
women ere needed here. IN most places
where | have lived or travelled women
are in blessed majority, ard it seems
that tho Lord likes them better than
men, because he has made more of them.
There is i'll most places surplus of
good womanhood, and they therefore do
not get full appreciation. But New
Zealand is an exception. In this colony
there are 80, 200 less women than men.
This will by circumstances DO adjusted.
There ought certainly to be as many
women as men in every land, for every
man is entitled to good wife, and
every woman is entitled to good hus-
band, The difficulty is that war and
rum kill so many men that the man in
tended for tho woman's lifetime part
nership is apt to lie in the soldier $
grave trench or in the drunk ards ditch.
In the paradisaical and perfect state
the womanhood equaled tho manhood,
for there was one of each kind. The
women in New Zealand have already
done well, for while i'll the United
States and Europe the women are dis
cussing in parlors and on the platforms
how they shall get their rights at tho
ballot box that castle has already been
stormed and taken by the women here.
After awhile the brave sis,erhoods il
the United States and Great britain
will band together, and from the crowd
ed parlors where so many languish iii
inanition and inoccupation they will
make crusade to these parts of the
earth. where their presence would be
hailed and their opportunities aug
mented.
The theory that men must so 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, fa-
theirs and brothers. Instead of their being
surplus of men in the colonies, there
ought to be 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 i'll New Zea-
land for more good womanhood, but
there is room for more artists and natu-
ralists.
Here are mountains 5000, $1,000,
IL, 900, $4,000 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 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 a geologist wild
with interest or send him running
up and down these attitudes with crow
bar to dig, or hammer to strike, OF tape
line to measure. On night in June,
1886, the mountains of Tarawera and
Roto1nahana, New Zealand, had grand
frolic. For many years tourists had gone
to visit the terraces" as they were
called-ancient forms of volcanic erup-
ton.
There were stairs of pictured stones,
step above step of pumice and lava.
reaching from earth toward heaven, but
some of the steps of the stairs 90 and
100 feet high-not so much Jacobs
ladder as an omnipotent stairway, up
and down which walked all the splen-
dors 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, petrified hyacinth, lily and yio-
let and all laid out as with a divine
geometry. Such curve, such bosses ol
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 chis'
els. On the night of Jnne0 1886, the
moon was passing into the second quar-
ter when, 10 minutes after O'Clock, the
earth shook and mountains erupted.
Standing 10, ~, IA miles on the people
felt the shock and saw the ascent of the
steam column and the redhot rocks ana
the volcanic ash and scoria, and th'
smoke, looking like vast pine tree ae
oording 70 the statements OF the poetic
but like an umbrella or mushroom, ae
cording 20 the description Of the rustic
Those who lived near the base Of th'
hills did not survive to tell the tale o
the catastrophe, The detonaiions wer'
heard $50 miles away, That was q can
nonading Ia which the batteries wer
toucbed on by hidden dynRinica huol