Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/45

 disrupted, riven, and tumbled about, into ravines, terraces, ridges, and conical peaks, showing what terrific and eccentric forces must have been at work at some former epoch. We bowl rapidly along now, crossing numerous clear brooks, their sparkling current playing amid the vivid green of the watercress, and forming a grateful contrast to the dun bracken and manouka all around. In among the ridges, are tall groups of tree-ferns, with enormous fronds radiating gracefully from their mossy centres. But now, with a cheery halloa to the horses, who neigh and prick their ears responsively, with a crack of the whip and the rattle of hoofs, we pull up at Rose's Hotel, at Oxford; and, laden with dust, we descend, shake ourselves, and are shown into clean cool rooms, where we make plentiful ablutions, and soon enjoy a most appetizing and toothsome repast. We expect from the name to find a pretentious academic town. Not so, however. The traveller in the colonies, soon learns to attach mighty little significance to names. In N.S.W., for instance, Vegetable Creek is a mining centre with sometimes eight or nine thousand inhabitants, while the adjacent township of Dundee, consists of two public-houses, one store, and a few bark-covered sheds, pig-styes, and a post-office.

The town of Oxford, however, at present, merely consists of the hotel. It is a well-ordered, comfortable town. There is no squabbling, because there are no neighbours; and for the same reason, drainage and other municipal works are all as