Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/169

 On we hurry through a splendid farming district. Past Winchester, with its neat villas and trim gardens; past Temuka, with its handsome white-spired church and Gothic schools, its well-stocked farms and plethoric corn-yards; past Arowhenua, with its Maori village, and another mountain stream brawling over its bed of shingle. On, with accelerated speed, through magnificently cultivated farms, rich swaths of stubble, and ample evidences on every hand of rural wealth and thriving settlement. I have rounded sheep over every mile of this country in the olden time, when there was little else but flax, raupo, tussock, wild pig, and unbroken ground. Verily the times have changed and happily. Men are surely better than wild pig, and smiling farms than lonely shepherds' huts.

I am fairly lost in delighted wonder, and we are glad when the train rolls into Timaru, and we get housed in the comfortable Grosvenor Hotel, and find time to draw breath, and try to realize the infinite alterations which have taken place in twenty years of busy colonial life.

Time has indeed made many changes here. When I last visited Timaru, I sailed up from Lyttelton, in a small coasting tub of a steamer. There was a terrific ground swell off the open beach of shingle, and the breakers rolled their curling crests landwards with a roar and crash like thunder. All landing, both cargo and passengers, was done in huge unwieldy surf-boats. And it