Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/59

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  • teen cents. Round steak costs thirteen cents a pound;

the butcher told me he rarely sold a sirloin steak, but when he does, he gets twenty cents a pound for it. Leg of mutton sells for twelve cents a pound, and mutton chops, thirteen. Pork chops are sixteen cents a pound, and ham and bacon twenty-four cents. The butcher makes a difference in price when a customer has meat delivered and charged. Butchers at home do not make this distinction; the man who pays cash, and carries his purchase home, is charged as much as the patron who runs an account, and has everything delivered. The beef here is inferior to ours; there is no such thing in New Zealand as corn-fed cattle. . . . We also visited a dry-goods store, and, so far as Adelaide was able to judge, prices were not much lower than at home. Besides, everything seemed out of style. . . . In Atchison, market gardeners sell tomato and cabbage plants growing in boxes. Today we saw plants grown in exactly the same way in front of Auckland grocery stores, as this is the season for making garden here. . . . I have never seen better-looking horses anywhere than I see in Auckland. They are usually of the Clydesdale strain. All sorts of live-stock seem well fed and well bred. . . . This is a poor trip, compared with the trip through Japan, China, India, etc. There the people dress and look different; here the people are so much like those at home that we do not seem to have been away, if we can forget the pronunciations. . . . In the poorer quarters of Auckland, we saw a meal advertised for twelve cents. It consisted of tea, bread and butter, and fish. . . . Anything that sells for a nickel at