Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/94

 The people here are much politer to servants than Americans Ten minutes before midnight we landed at Taumarunui, which is a switch-engine town; I heard a switch engine puffing in the yards nearly all night. A town that has a railroad switch engine is a grade above the ordinary electric-light town Soon after we entered the train at Waiora, the conductor entered our car, and asked: "Anyone from Waiora?" Then those of us who had entered the train at that station, handed him our tickets. In America, railway conductors have a way of tagging passengers. I should think it would be easy here to steal a ride. Stations are not called, and there is no train porter, so when we arrived at Taumarunui we were compelled to hunt up the conductor and ask him if that was our station.

—The Waunganui river is known as "the Rhine of New Zealand." We journeyed down this river eleven hours today, and it was the big event of our stay in New Zealand. The Waunganui river is a series of rapids, and during the eleven hours of the journey we were always in a crooked mountain gorge. We saw no farm land, no settlements; nothing but wild mountain scenery, and a rapid, roaring river sometimes not more than forty feet wide. The boat in which we traveled was a very narrow one; not so wide as a street car, but probably sixty feet long, and supplied with powerful engines. In going down some of the rapids the engines were stopped, and occasionally reversed. The government has spent a great