The essence of a holiday is complete change of scene, air and occupation.

The last word is accurate enough, when you come to think of it, for holiday-making to be a success is quite an occupation in itself. It can be spoiled by over-exertion, on the one hand, and by an ennui-producing “loaf” on the other. The happy medium can be obtained by a judicious choice of place and circumstance, by taking sufficient trouble to select a suitable locality where the interest of the scenery and life more than compensates for the cost and pains of travel.

A change as complete as possible is above all necessary for the people of the city and the town, and in New Zealand's thousand miles of length and vast variety of landscape there is infinite choice of places which give the breakaway, the different atmosphere and life, that bring true refreshment to the body and spirit, give a toning and tuning-up to work-jangled nerves.

Fortunately in such a country as New Zealand it is quite amazingly easy to find that change of scene, and cheap withal. This is no vast continental land, where you have to travel day after day through an unvarying country that soon becomes monotonous. The quick succession of different landscapes, of new phases of natural beauty, is the feature of our islands which has most impressed many of our visitors from abroad. The islandstrewn gulfs, the rocky coasts, the shining breadths of harbour and estuary, the quiet scenes of pastoral and agricultural industry, the cities and towns, quickly give place to the mountains, the bush, the tranquil blue lakes, the volcanic and hydro-thermal wonderlands, the countless forms which water-play takes in this land of streams and waterfalls; the icy Alps and the glaciers, the gorges and fiords; the wonders, too, of engineering ingenuity in railroading a once intractable interior, with its canyons and lofty ridges. Every kind of soft and pastoral scenery has its contrast and counterpoise in the indomitable high places, the dramatic surprises of the geyser and smoking-mountain country, the immensely deep lakes, the jungly forests, dripping and fragrant and twilight-dim; the great rivers, rolling, rapid-whitened, through forestland.