hips to London.

Wool is also one of the important products of New Zealand, but it has a
much coarser and harsher fibre than the fine merino wool of Australia.
As a rule, sheep that are grown for their wool feed on grass; those that
are for mutton get their final feeding on turnips; and all England has
said that turnip-fed mutton is good.

Christchurch, a city of about seventy thousand people, is one of the
great centres of the wool and mutton industry. The city is there because
the great Canterbury Plain is one of the finest grazing regions in the
world. Christchurch is not very old--it was made a city in 1862--but it
has grown pretty vigorously. Its handsome buildings--churches, college,
museum, and school-houses--are as fine as those of any city of the same
size anywhere. The streets are wide and beautifully kept, and electric
railways extend to half a dozen suburbs.

Out in the suburbs are the large meat-freezing establishments. In the
season for export about fifteen thousand sheep are dressed and frozen
daily in the great plants in and around Christchurch.

The freezing-rooms are kept at a temperature of a cold winter night. In
a single plant there may be as many as ten or fifteen thousand carcasses
hanging from great frames, and the walls of the rooms are covered with a
thick coat of ice and frost. In three days from the time the meat is put
into the freezing-room it will be ready for its long journey.

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand; it is likewise the windy port
of the Pacific, for it is in the eye of the "roaring forties," the
strong west wind of the South Temperate Zone. But Wellington has the
harbor, and the harbor has the shipping; and because of this Wellington
is a very rich and prosperous municipality.

On the whole, the New Zealanders have not much cause to envy the people
of other lands. Every man and every self-supporting woman can become the
owner of a homestead; and about one person in every ten has become a
landholder. The government lets them have the land on very easy terms of
payment. Women have the same political rights as are possessed by men.
They can vote, hold public office, and hold property in their own names.

The government has established postal savings banks at which any one may
deposit money; what is equally good, the money is loaned at a small rate
of interest to farmers while they are waiting for their crops. What is
still better, the bank never fails, leaving the de