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Colonial facts and fictions: Humorous sketches cover

Colonial facts and fictions: Humorous sketches

Chapter 26: THE GENERAL ASPECT OF NATURE IN NEW ZEALAND.
By John Milne
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About This Book

A collection of short, often satirical sketches and travel anecdotes about colonial life in Australia and New Zealand. The writer blends humorous observation and local anecdote with mild social critique, targeting quarantine rules, civic pretensions, hospitality rituals, and settler enthusiasms. Vivid descriptions of ports, outback towns, flora and fauna, and encounters with Indigenous communities and immigrant labor illustrate daily routines and oddities, while episodes ranging from hotel scenes and sporting pastimes to geothermal tours and frontier legends emphasize the gap between polished fact and imaginative storytelling.

THE GENERAL ASPECT OF NATURE IN NEW ZEALAND.

1. By the medium of mere words, it is impossible to convey an adequate idea of the grandeur—the supreme loveliness we may say—of the enchanting and ravishing beauty of the general aspect of nature in New Zealand.

2. When a stranger stands for the first time before the general aspect of nature in New Zealand to interview its fairy nooks, filled with umbrageous ferns, he is petrified with admiration.

(Don’t stand too long, or you may get your feet damp.)

3. The green glory of the mountain’s bosky brow, the streamlets gleaming like diamonds, surpass the wildest flights of the Eastern imagination.

(If it rains put up your umbrella.)

The silver sheen of waterfalls, the merry laugh of bubbling brooks, hold the traveller spell-bound with enchantment.

(If you linger too long, the guide may become impatient; an extra shilling will cure the complaint.)

4. The palaces of nature—lakes clasping islets in their arms and wasting themselves away in kissing pebbly shores—are natural creations never to be obliterated from the feeblest mind.

5. Oh! drops of sparkling diamonds. Oh! awe-inspiring magnitudes of Alpine greatness. Oh! unsullied crowns of snow, stupendous cliffs, and gossamer-like films of poetic mist; what are ye to the general aspect of nature in New Zealand?

(The round trip will cost you about £50. The best place at which to buy your bowie-knife and general outfit will be found by reference to the newspaper. I’m not interested in the transaction, but suppose my books were examined?)

Tableau: Oh! what revelations!

THE END.

BILLING & SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.