I am beginning to get wise to this science of train-tramping: or anyhow, not so dumb. The thing is to suit your conversation to your province. When you are puffing along at seventy knots an hour, or thereabouts, in the Winter-less North, you simply must talk timber, taller the better, if you want your fellow-passengers to look on you with the approving eye that says, “That's a nice girl that is, no hokum about her.”

Whereas, when your train is midway between Auckland and Hamilton, and a travelling companion breathes in your ear the word “Averages,” it's up to you to grasp the fact that he is not talking about Don Bradman. What he means is Butter-Fat: your cue to look out of the window, wave a comprehensive paw, and say, “I've never seen such pasture.”

It won't be so far-fetched, at that. I have taken the train journey through the Waikato after months and months of a Sydney world which was baked to a crisp. Outside the windows flashed the douce green pastures, dotted with daisy-like lambs. A green world, a white world, and very frisky cirrus clouds entirely in sympathy. Then I knew I was back in my own land. Still, butter-fat is paramount over daisy-white lambs or anything else up yonder, and it is just as well for the intending passengers to discover the difference between a Holstein and a Jersey. It's quite simple, really: one has longer horns, but the other is fonder of prodding you with them.

This time we don't stop at charming Hamilton — to which, however, we may go a-jaunting later on—because the excursion train is in a great hurry to get to Rotorua. You will not be bored. No matter what your tastes or lack of tastes, you still won't be bored. We can arrange it, Madam.

As, for instance: I don't want to talk scandal about the place, and I myself have spent months on end there without unduly disturbed nights. But you know some of the little ladies who come to New Zealand with a light in their eye, calling us the Shivery Isles and half-hoping they'll see a geyser go off pop? Well, I met one of these almost at the end of her Dominion tour. Yes, she had loved it. Yes, the Southern Lakes were too marvellous, and John (he being the husband), had taken spools and spools of snapshots down in the Milford Sounds. “But I think this thermal business of yours is all spoof, you know,” she told me.

Nature smiled a smile. And the lady came to Rotorua.

I met her a week later, haggard but happy. She was talking to a large but sceptical audience. “Yes,” she declared, “the first night, I heard the most peculiar noises outside my window, I'm sure I did. When we looked out in the morning, there was one of those geysers playing in the backyard. About forty feet high, wouldn't you say, John? It was very spectacular, though, of course, some might have found it alarming.”

But in her case, it was obviously necessary for Nature to go to extremes.