The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1907-07-05

new zEALAND'S
Loneliness.
Great Stretches of Country
With few Houses and Towns.
Mail Delivered Twice a Week in
Summer and Once In
Winter.

AS nothing in Europe astonishes the
New Zealander so much as the crowds
SO nothing in New Zealand is so sur
prising to the Englishmen as the vast
stretches of uninhabited land,
4 Even the tourist on the coach roads
may easily travel twenty miles without
passing a single house. On the road
leading to one of the most popular
resorts of North island, along fifty
miles of highway, there is but one
small inn, where the horses are chang
ed, says a correspondent of Macmill-
ans Magazine, and one Maori village
with a solitary white teacher for its
school. The rest is scrub or swamp,
where wild horses roam, or cleared
bush, or farmland with patches of
rough pasture.
And to reach the far famed lakes
of the South island, beautiful enough
when they are reached, the coach
tolls for two whole days through inch
es of dust and mud, according to- the
season, dragging its slow way past
miles of seeming desert, where even
the yellow tussock grass is supplanted
by thistles or by patches of green
lichen resembling nothing so much as
verdigris.
In New Zealand they appraise land
by the number of sheep it will car
~, and this is five or six acres to a
sheep, and a merino sheep into the
bargain.
The driver as he passes, filings out
letter bags at the little wayside post
offices or tuck them into wooden
boxes perched by the highway. In
this way the post is delivered twice
or possibly thrice week in summer
and once in winter. But this is along
the coach roads-any map will show
how few they are-and even they
are often impossible for wheeled traf-
fic in winter. Then the post cart
sunk to it's axles lumbers along at
postman rides in mud up to his horse
girths, and those who have business
abroad do likewise or wait at home
for betterweather.
Luckily, in no part of New Zealand
are the winters so long and so severe
as in England; but metal for road
making it scarce in New Zealand and
labor is scarcer and dearer. When
one thinks of all that has been done,
and of the fifty years or so that II
has been done in, the wonder. is, not
that the roads are bad, but that there
are so many roads of any kind
On many big runs, which years of
toll have gone to make, all the win
ter's stores must be housed not later
than April, because when the rains
come only an OK dray or a pack horse
can travel along the road TO the
township. and that with Difficult
ty; and the storekeepers must bring
all their wares from the nearest rail-
way station or coast town before the
weather breaks, standing out of their
money for many months, or else they
must suffer the loss of oxen and
horses begged or exhausted with the
heavy winters work.
No wonder store goods are dear.
-Four foot deep and four foot wide
is the familiar description of the
roads in the roadless north whicn
has pre-eminently evil reputation
in that way; but even in the old set
Elements southwark walking is often
out of the question, not only because
there is nowhere to go within walk
ing distance, but also because OF the
roads and the unbridged rivers. Nor
is that the worst that can befall,for
in many districts even yet there are
no roads, only bride paths, or foot
tracks ending az the waters edge,
nearest port Of call for coastwise
steamers.