SOME PLEASANT OUTINGS.
Here Mr. Oseba runs off on a pleasing tangent, and he leads us to the conclusion that a tour of Zelania is a jaunt of unrivalled pleasure; so full of change, of variety and surprising incidents, that curiosity lashes one forward, and physical vigor so rapidly improves as to banish all thought of weariness. On these tours good health is actually “catching,” and the appetite always arrives before meal time.
He describes in interesting detail the ease, safety and comfort, as well as the jocund hilarity, of these kaleidoscopic gyrations, and how easily, with a word and a wire from Mr. T. E. Donne, the candid and competent tourist manager, one may find the path to the noblest scenes.
“That time may not hang heavily on the spring bathers, millions of fish—better than Peter ever hauled from the Sea of Galilee—are waiting in many lakes for the tempting fly, and if one tires of glacier climbing in the South, the woods are full of red deer, and other nimble game, waiting to give him a wilder sport.
A Stag’s Head
“As for climate, I conclude that one may choose that as he chooses his drinks, for he may have sunshine or shower, chilling glacier or burning valley, frozen or boiling lakes, simply by switching on or off a new path. The weather is ‘almost always’ good, and as one may dodge a storm by going fishing, instead of going mountain climbing, or a hot wave by stalking deer instead of hunting geysers or Maori maidens, bad weather is not worth talking about.”
Then he turns the globe and shows that Zelania is in the Southern Hemisphere, and he expects that as soon as his discoveries are made known, many thousands of people—to avoid the severe cold winters of Europe and America—will spend a season of eternal spring among those romantic scenes. Here Mr. Oseba grows eloquent. I quote:—
“As bare-handed Nature, by her almost infinite allurements, spanked the rude savage of Zelania into an eloquent politician, so she improves upon every animal turned loose upon her palpitating bosom. Bring a little starved rabbit to Zelania—well, it does not become a tiger the same afternoon, but it soon begins business, and in a brief period it has the ‘lord of creation’ on the defensive—for it is eating him out.