- 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 A. M. to noon; week days, 10 A. M. to 1 P. M., 2 P. M. to 4 P. M. 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."
Monday, January 20.—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 A. M. 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 A. M.
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. . . .