And then the fiords or rivers of the ocean extending into the land! They are long, narrow, and deep, and surrounded by giant mountains with waterfalls, glaciers, and snow fields. Milford Sound is twelve hundred and seventy feet deep; and Mitre Peak, a mighty snow-capped mountain, rises almost precipitously above it.

New Zealand has a climate like our own, save that it is warm in the north and cool in the south. It is so mild that the grass is fresh the year round. Many trees hold their leaves; many bushes, such as the holly, are always green, and the country has been called the evergreen land. The palm lily grows to a height of twenty feet, shooting out at the top in a great green tassel like the leaves of a palm. There are curious plants, crawling shrubs, and flowers of all colors.

Palm lily.

And then the ferns! New Zealand has enough to fill the conservatories of the world. In the mountains the glens are walled with them, some great trees and others as fine as a maiden's hair. There is one fern which is used by the natives for bedding, and another which is half fern, half vine. It climbs to the tops of the forests, coiling its wirelike stems about the branches. The stems hold their coil after plucking and can be used for bed springs. Think of sleeping on fern mattresses, upon fern springs, and you have one of the possibilities of this faraway land.

How about wild animals? Shall we dare go alone through the forests? Yes, New Zealand has no ferocious beasts, and its natives have become almost civilized. There are no snakes to speak of, and the lizards are harmless.

The birds are most interesting. Swans with feathers of velvety black fly over the lakes, and the black parson bird, which has white feathers at its throat like a parson's white necktie, sings in the bushes.

Parson bird.

There are wild ducks and wild parrots of different kinds. One is a green parrot, which prowls about at night like an owl, and there is a dull-colored one, which fastens its claws into the wool of a live sheep and tears its side

open with its powerful beak that it may get the kidney fat of which it is fond. This is the kea parrot. It has killed vast numbers of sheep, and for this reason it is much hunted by the farmers.

New Zealand has another bird which is found nowhere else. This is the kiwi, the famed bird without wings. It is about as big as a common chicken, with brown, hairlike feathers and a long, sharp bill with which it can dig down. into the earth for worms. The kiwi is almost blind in the daytime, but it sees well at night. It lives in the fern beds, and when hunted hides in the crevices of the rocks.

The kiwi is supposed to be the last of the many wingless birds which New Zealand had in past ages, at which time there were some

twice as big as the biggest ostrich. One species of this kind was the moa, which grew so tall that, did it live now, it could not stand upright in the ordinary schoolroom. It laid eggs as big as a football, with shells as thick as the cover of this book. The

skeletons and eggs of

such birds have been

Kiwis.

found, and we can see some in the museum at Christ Church, where we may stop on our way north.

II. A VISIT TO A MEAT-FREEZING FACTORY

WE

E take the train at Bluff and go northward along the east coast. The land is rolling, with valleys and plains. Now the mountains are afar off on our left, and now close to the sea. We ride for miles through fields fenced with green hedges. They contain rich crops and meadows on which fat sheep and cattle are feeding. The farmhouses are small, wooden buildings roofed with galvanized iron. There are no barns, for the animals can

graze out of doors all the year round. Here and there is a haystack covered with thatch. Some of the horses have

blankets to shield them from the rain.

We pass through small towns not unlike those of our country. Nearly every house has a garden about it, separated from the street by a green hedge. We stop off a day at Dunedin, a thriving city of fifty thousand people. It has all modern improvements, and is on a good harbor. From there we go northward to Christ Church, another good town of about the same size.

How rich the land is, and how fat the cattle and sheep! We thought the farms good on our way to Dunedin; but we are now on the Canterbury Plains, one of the richest parts of New Zealand and in the best sheep lands upon earth. New Zealand has many millions of sheep, enough to give more than a hundred to its every family and leave thousands to spare.

The sheep here are different, however, from those of Australia, where the climate and grasses are just suited for making fine wool. The moist air and rich vegetation of New Zealand are better for mutton, and the sheep are reared more for their meat, their carcasses being frozen and sent in cold storage chambers to England. New Zealand leads all countries in its product of mutton. It rears millions of sheep every year for the people of England, and has a fleet of steamers always sailing back and forth across the waters to and from London. Some of the ships go about South America, others about South Africa, and others through the Isthmus of Suez and across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The distance is great, but so many sheep are sent that New Zealand mutton can

be sold at a lower price in London than that raised in England itself.

It is a common expression that you can not get blood out of a turnip, but the New Zealanders know how to do so. Indeed, the delicious chops we have at the hotels come from turnip-fed mutton. All the way from Bluff we have been passing turnip fields, in some of which the sheep were eating the leaves and in others where they appeared to be playing ball, the cropped-off turnips looking like thousands of new baseballs scattered over the black ground. After the leaves are consumed, the sheep eat the white roots. They dig them out of the ground and bite away until nothing is left. Some farmers dig up the turnips and feed them outside, burying them in pits or mounds for food when the grass becomes scarce.

Christ Church, where we are now, has great meat-freezing factories in which the mutton is prepared for the market. We drive out to an establishment which kills about five thousand sheep every day during the season. The sheep are enticed into the factory by several old decoy sheep, which are kept to lead their brothers to slaughter. The decoys start the procession, and the thousands behind follow them up the roadway to the killing rooms, where the decoys are sent back for more.

The sheep are killed and dressed, and then frozen for shipment to England. We go with the manager into one of the freezing rooms. How cold it is! The temperature is not far from zero, and the walls are coated with snow. Carcasses of mutton hang in long rows from the ceiling. There are thousands of them here in this room. They were put in three days ago, and they are already frozen as