Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/83

 *ing an early walk this morning, I encountered the courthouse in Rotorua. Here are some of the signs on the office doors: "Stipendiary Magistrate;" "Registrar of Old Age Pensions;" "Vaccination Inspector;" "Registrar of Deaths, Births and Marriages." The office hours of the different officials were: Saturdays, 10 to noon; week days, 10  to 1, 2 to 4 Counting holidays, that is an average of about four hours a day for New Zealand officials At the moving-picture shows here the best seats are 36 cents, and a seat on a bench in the extreme rear of the hall costs 12 cents In a Rotorua paper I picked up last night, I saw a statement that a man had been fined $125 "for sly grog-selling." That is what we call "bootlegging."

—I awoke this morning at 5 o'clock, and found the sun coming up. You have perhaps noted that the sun is not up at 5 on the 20th of January in our part of the world. While the days are very warm here, the nights are quite cool; at 5 I was quite cold in bed, and awoke to look for more covering I read myself to sleep last night, very comfortably, by the light of a tallow candle. Electric lights do not seem to be absolutely necessary to the comfort of mankind In riding over the mountains here, I find great tracts of flourishing pine trees which have been planted by the government. Convicts did the work. By this means, the barren mountains are being changed into a living green