the distant sea from a range of tussock hills. There was no native
bush there; but there were several groves of imported timber standing
wide apart---sentinel-like--seeming lonely and striking in their
isolation.

"Grand country, New Zealand, eh?" said a stout man with a brown
face, grey beard, and grey eyes, who sat between the driver and
another passenger on the box.

"You don't call this grand country!" exclaimed the other passenger,
who claimed to be, and looked like, a commercial traveller, and might
have been a professional spieler--quite possibly both. "Why, it's
about the poorest country in New Zealand! You ought to see some of
the country in the North Island--Wairarapa and Napier districts, round
about Pahiatua. I call this damn poor country."

"Well, I reckon you wouldn't, if you'd ever been in Australia--back
in New South Wales. The people here don't seem to know what a grand
country they've got. You say this is the worst, eh? Well, this would
make an Australian cockatoo's mouth water-the worst of New Zealand
would."

"I always thought Australia was all good country," mused the
driver--a flax-stick. "I always thought--"

"Good country!" exclaimed the man with the grey beard, in a tone of
disgust. "Why, it's only a mongrel desert, except some bits round
the coast. The worst dried-up and God-forsaken country I was ever
in."