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NOTES ON NEW ZEALAND.
217
not possess it. Social equality, in short, is something of a reality, and genuine merit has a genuine chance. Another marked trait in the colonial character is sociability. On land and on sea, on the road and in the railway carriage strangers manifest towards one another a cordiality conspicuously absent, as a rule, from the behaviour of unintroduced persons in the Mother Country. These characteristics, however—hospitality, equality, and sociability—are so well known to belong to a marked extent to almost all Colonists, and the reasons for their development are so obvious that it is unnecessary for me to
