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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 71

Middle Island

Middle Island.

If the North Island has a magnificent inheritance in her forests, the Middle island can boast of her magnificent plain-lands, rolling downs, and vast mountain-ranges, all of which, to a greater or less degree, have already been made to contribute to the wealth of the colony.

The middle portion of the Middle Island presented to the first-comers a vast plain, covered with little more than waving tussock-grass, offering little or no obstruction to the plough.

Travelling south, the country assumes a different character: easy undulating downs, well watered, here and there interspersed with fertile plains, the greater portion admirably adapted for agriculture, and all of it for pastoral purposes.

The climate of the Middle Island is not so warm in summer nor so mild in winter as that experienced in the North Island. However, as has already been stated, there are no extremes of heat or cold. Much more might be said in praise of the colony, which is rapidly gaining for itself the right to be called the "Britain of the South." Without dwelling further upon such topics, it is deemed necessary to say so much as a prelude to the more solid matter-of-fact statements, in order that readers may better comprehend the comparative ease with which agricultural and pastoral pursuits are carried on in New Zealand as compared with other countries less favourably situated.