To those who are able to travel in summer, New Zealand presents a store of attractions that are becoming increasingly recognised both by our own people and by visitors from overseas.

Although our native trees and shrubs have the happy habit of keeping their foliage all the year round, it is in the summer that their richest foliage is seen. It is then that the warm, scented breezes of cultivated valley and forest-clad hilltop cast their spell, telling the story of Nature's rich treasures spilled from the overflowing cornucopia of this much-favoured land. Here is the time, and here the place where it is bliss to be alive.

Winter has its own special appeal—the healthy rugged life and merriment of alpine sports in mountain resorts or the attractiveness of towns, where football fields draw their multitudes by day and the cabaret makes its syncopated call to less strenuous, but more tuneful, activity by night. But it is in the summer that the people like to scatter and weave about through the country, where every place has its own particular charm, where every prospect pleases, and where man finds his mind stimulated and his health renewed for the work of the opening year.

Then it is that the facilities for comfort in travel may be enjoyed to the fullest extent. Then it is that the biggest fish in the sea show their willingness to come out of it, the green fields ripen in the sun, the pickers of hops and raspberries migrate from field to field and the milking machine is heard through the land, singing its morning and evening lullaby while it makes for the people their most certain additions from the wealth of the land.

Now is the season when holidays may be taken with the best prospect of their full enjoyment, when schools and colleges, factories and warehouses, shops and offices organise their combined outings for rail trips to distant fields and beaches, forgetting for a day any irksomeness they find in work in the purple patch of liberty and the bird-like freedom brought by association with their fellows in the open spaces of the great out-of-doors.

Those overseas agents who know their job plan itineraries carefully for their clients, so that the main harvest of tourists arrives in New Zealand in Nature's own harvest time. Greater interest is being taken by these in the Department's touring tickets, which allow for unrestricted travel through either or both the Islands of New Zealand for a definite period. These tickets are of particular use for summer travel, as every way lies open then from the North Cape to the Bluff for completely visiting the pleasure resorts of the Dominion. Except in summer, certain places do not appeal to the page 6 average traveller, but at this time of the year every variety may be sampled with pleasure and all accommodation, whether for travel or rest, is at its best.

Summer travel has developed greatly in New Zealand in recent years, thanks to the improved transport facilities and the greater capacity for appreciating its advantages. It helps to keep people well-informed, although at times a plethora of travel information may prove embarrassing. An instance of this is recalled of the late Lord Bryce, who was an inveterate traveller. His biographer tells that one day Sir H. Campbell-Banner-man was found chuckling after a Cabinet meeting. He said:—

“We had a very all-round discussion —Morocco, the near-East, Armenia, and constant talk about places not marked on the map. But Bryce was always ready. He knew every place, how to get there, how long it took to get to the railroad, how to cross the desert by camels, and the rest of it. Just as we were rising, the Home Secretary told us of a peculiar case just reported in Regent Street. Bryce cleared his throat and began, ‘When I leave the House at night I often walk home by Regent Street.’ Here I put my hand on his shoulder and said, ‘My dear Bryce, you must allow us to know something about Regent Street'.”

But as the world is ours for the using, so travel through it, particularly in the summer time of the temperate zone, is a particularly pleasing way by which it may be made to serve our educative ends.

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