Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/184

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168
Our New Zealand Cousins.

and the long rows of well-filled sacks testify to the fertility of the soil. We pass the famous quarries of white stone, and looking over the surrounding country, can see numerous evidences of volcanic action in the circular mounds which stud the landscape. Sites of extinct fumaroles and geysers these.

Away to the left the Pacific reflects the rays of the afternoon sun. Moeraki Lighthouse glistens in the warm light, and the sheen sparkles on lovely bays, and glistens along the wavy line of great curling breakers on the beach.

Yonder is Shag Point jutting out into deep water. There is a colliery at work at the extreme verge of the headland. Otago is rich in minerals, and her coalfields are important and extensive.

Palmerston is a pretty town in a hollow, surrounded by hills, low and undulating. The Salvation Army has been doing a great work here. The leaders were two lasses, and they have succeeded in enlisting a large following, and have shut up several hotels. So we are informed by a polite, though pale young gentleman, who makes himself very pleasant, gives us much unsolicited information, and winds up by wanting to sell us a few celluloid cuffs and collars.

In self-sacrificing gratitude, we pass him on to a burly farmer, who eventually, on our recommendation, purchases a set, and doubtless made a very good bargain. This peripatetic peddling we find to be a feature of the railways here. The pedlar is generally employed by the leading newspapers to