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Round and about New Zealand.

New Zealand is becoming aware of itself as a youth emerging from childhood or a girl at her first ball. Wherever one goes round and about the country there is found an intense, earnestness to attract the attention of visitors. In Progress Leagues, Expansion Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Harbour Boards, City and Borough Councils and editorial sanctums there is determination that the attractions and amenities of that particular locality shall be made better known to fellow-New Zealanders and throughout the world. Local patriotism is at a high temperature; and gradually, as greater advantage is taken by people, all over the country, of the Dominion's now vastly improved facilities for travel, the fact is borne in upon our people that the time has come when the world must pay court to this Dominion. For it is the home of all that is fairest in nature's most choice selection of scenic wonders, of all that is most remarkable in thermal and subterranean phenomena, and of all those other things that make for the healthy enjoyment of life as it should be lived.

Thus local patriotism is being welded into a national patriotism founded on knowledge that transcends provincialism and permits the story of New Zealand's tourist attractions to be told with one firm voice by the people of New Zealand to the rest of the world.

Accustomed as we are to the contours of our home mountains, lakes and bays, and familiarised as so many of us are with the more easily reached other portions of this country, it is difficult to realise the tremendous uplift which the spirits of overseas visitors, coming here for the first time, must receive in the loom of the vast mountain masses of the Southern Alps and the Southern Lakeland, the wide range of forest—from northern kauri to southern beech—in the lake and river scenery, the richly cultivated fields of the south and the many dairied farmlands of the north, or in the flowering shrubs of Canterbury's home town and the bewildering wealth of colour in Auckland suburban gardens.

But we can, at least, believe their transports to be genuine, and we should be able to waft them on towards further travel in the country, assured that as even the most indefatigable of our own explorers has never yet seen all that the Dominion has in store for the traveller, the visitor will find that the further he goes the more new things he will discover and the greater will be his appreciation of the country as a place of endless charm.

The flow of tourists from overseas is setting in. There is a greater tendency to compete in bringing travellers to New Zealand. Besides the regular sea liners and the rapidly developing business in tourist cruising by steamer amongst these southern seas, the early running of express air-liners may be expected. These, by cutting down the time of travel from Europe and America, will bring New Zealand within the vacation scope of many thousands who never previously could leave their home-country for a long enough period to visit in the Southern Hemisphere. Those who come may be well acquainted with northern countries, but in all their travels they will find the greatest treasures, in scenery, sport and healing waters, round and about New Zealand.