The Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 4
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: Following the Equator, Part 4

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Release Date: June 24, 2004 [EBook #5811]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, PART 4 ***

Produced by David Widger

FOLLOWING
THE EQUATOR
A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
BY
MARK TWAIN
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

Part 4

CHAPTER XXX.

Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops; man would have made
him with an appetite for sand.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea, and reached Bluff, in
New Zealand, early in the morning. Bluff is at the bottom of the middle
island, and is away down south, nearly forty-seven degrees below the
equator. It lies as far south of the line as Quebec lies north of it,
and the climates of the two should be alike; but for some reason or other
it has not been so arranged. Quebec is hot in the summer and cold in the
winter, but Bluff's climate is less intense; the cold weather is not very
cold, the hot weather is not very hot; and the difference between the
hottest month and the coldest is but 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

In New Zealand the rabbit plague began at Bluff. The man who introduced
the rabbit there was banqueted and lauded; but they would hang him, now,
if they could get him. In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is
detested and persecuted; in the Bluff region the natural enemy of the
rabbit is honored, and his person is sacred. The rabbit's natural enemy
in England is the poacher, in Bluff its natural enemy is the stoat, the
weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the mongoose. In England any person
below the Heir who is caught with a rabbit in his possession must
satisfactorily explain how it got there, or he will suffer fine and
imprisonment, together with extinction of hi