Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/31

 Rh climate is its windiness. Its mountains are the playground of terrific winds, and its four thousand miles of coast-line is pounded by some of the heaviest seas known to the world.

The climate of New Zealand is both varied and healthful, due to the Dominion's isolation, wide range of latitude, and the proximity of all its parts to the ocean. As for its healthful qualities, for the last twenty years the country's average annual death rate has been less than ten per one thousand inhabitants, one of the lowest death rates ever recorded anywhere.

Not for its physical charms nor its climatic characteristics, however, is New Zealand best known to the world. Its recent world fame rests mainly on its humanities to man. New Zealand has long been singled out as a striking example of the Utopian tendencies of this age. Its initiativeness, its independence and progressiveness have marked it conspicuously, and the world echoes and reechoes with its well-earned encomiums. Although New Zealand has abundant opportunity to become more democratic still, it has set an example for legislation in favor of the people that might well be imitated by earth's greatest nations.

In this stronghold of liberalism there is, in a happy degree, government of, by, and for the people. There the "interests" do not exercise a dominating influence; for "special privilege" it is practically a barren field. There the evils of private commercial monopoly are not tolerated. "Trusts" have been sighted from afar and