ever you have or do not have, you may be quite sure you are receiving the very best the house has to offer, whether you are in a regular accommodation house or have been invited by a chance acquaintance on one of the lonely roads to come in and have a cup of tea.

Carpets I rarely saw, until I reached a township; bare boards, with perhaps a rag mat or some sacks, are the rule. Meals are generally served in the kitchen, often with a wooden bench to sit on, and always in company with whoever happens to be in the house, farmhands, sheep-shearers, miners, anyone, the Premier himself, if he happened to be electioneering anywhere in this, his electorate.

True back-country, colonial meals they are, too, with bountiful helpings which would make a dainty-feeding Londoner open his eyes. Food is the best of its kind, and used here, as always in New Zealand, with a wasteful extravagance I have never seen elsewhere. It may be roughly served, but the meat that is given you in Westland is fit to set before any king; it is always mutton, of course, in the back-country, varied with occasional bush-pigeons or game, but it is mutton such as I do not believe is to be found anywhere else in the world. It is always the lightest of home-made bread which the settlers' wives put before you, and potatoes which are balls of flour, for there is known to be no land which can grow such potatoes as this land of the virgin bush. On three hearty meals a day of meat and floury potatoes, with any amount of butter and the inevitable large cups of tea, which the average New Zealander drinks at least three, and often four and five times a day, it is no wonder that the children are so big that anyone accustomed to

English children would to be at least two

guess them years older than they really are. The fatherly Government, in the case of these isolated families, compels them to have their children properly educated; and if there is no elder brother or sister fit for the work, a teacher must live in the house and teach them for the regulation number of hours a day the usual subjects compulsory in the New Zealand State schools.

It is a delightfully deliberate and casual part of the world, this Westland. The homestead at which we first put up after crossing the South Alps was hedged in on every side by unbridged rivers, full of quicksands, and dangerous to the last degree when in flood, as they very often are. Many a good life has been lost in trying to ford these West Coast rivers. Every arrangement in these parts is made "rivers permitting," and often they do not permit. And even when they are bridged, it is often only with a ricketty suspension bridge merely for foot passengers; otherwise you ride across them on horseback. You must be able to sit a horse here; for often there is absolutely no other way of getting about, many of the roads being only fit for a horse, while if you walk or try to bicycle, even supposing you crash recklessly through the little streams, you will be brought up every few miles by a river. The horses are not beauties to look at nor to ride, but they are sure-footed on the rough roads and they can ford the rivers; indeed were one alone and unused to the country, the safest plan would be to give the horse the rein, and let it take its own way. These rivers rise to an impassable state in a few hours, and are down again as quickly. The settlers will talk of an "Old Man Flood," still an occasional occurrence, when for a fortnight, it may very well be, the

rivers are hopelessly unfordable even by the most practised horse.

Letters come in some parts only about once a fortnight, the rivers permitting. Parcels are far more erratic; if they happen to be more than five or six pounds in weight, the mailman may consider them too heavy, in which case he calmly plants them somewhere along the road, to await his good pleasure and convenience. A parcel of mine, that went astray down the West Coast, careered about the South Island for two months, and was the subject of sheaves of telegrams before it eventually fell into the hands of the post-office in Wellington.

The first thing that happened to me in Westland was to be riverbound. For days I had not been able to send a telegram or a letter; none of my friends or relatives knew exactly where I was; as for a shop or town I had almost forgotten what one looked like. My host remarked that people "should never come down that way if they were tied to time for a week or two"-a profoundly true remark. Down in the wilds of Westland you must cure yourself of being in a hurry; in a week, perhaps less, perhaps more, when rivers have gone down, when you have caught and shod a horse, and you can ride to the nearest telegraph office, ten or fifteen miles off, you will be able to send a telegram, and let your friends know you are alive; you might even see a week-old newspaper, and after all you have only been a fortnight without your letters.

The world wags along; there are wars and rumours of wars, revolutions and changes of dynasty; monarchs die and other monarchs succeed them; discoveries are made which astonish the whole scientific world; the press continues that making of books of which there is no end, and new

stars arise on the musical and artistic horizons. But down here it really does not matter. The steamer supposed to bring stores four or five times a year from Hokitika (the nearest town of more than a thousand people) is a month late; the Waitara or the Little Wanganui River is higher than it has been for years; these are the only events of which you are cognisant, except the latest totalisator news, or the latest sweepstakes in the local races. There are often not even any neighbours whose affairs you can discuss.

Doctors in this remote part of the world, like many other things, have perforce to be done without, except in cases of extreme emergency, when one is sometimes brought from the nearest town. I knew of one medical man who rode some hundred and twenty miles to see a patient. Night and day he rode, the settlers all along the way (for the news had spread rapidly, as it does in these back country districts) coming out with their best and swiftest horses for him, and he would swing off one horse and on to another without pausing. Sixty pounds it cost to bring him down; and the end of everything I learned one day when wandering along a bush road I found, hidden away among the tall, fern-covered trees, a little, flower-planted enclosure, with two lonely graves among the silent bush. It was strangely solemn that little cemetery, perhaps not even in consecrated ground, with no church within a hundred miles, and no headstone to mark who lay beneath.

A little further up the coast, when the backwoods become rather less back, the Government has attached a telephone to all the accommodation houses,huts and shanties the irreverent Englishman, who does not build his own dwelling, might call them, but they are the only places

to stay in down in Unknown New Zealand. Often also, you can send a telegram from them, as they are frequently post offices, and always you can get a good meal and a warm fire. As a rule these houses are about ten or fifteen miles apart always West Coast miles, which have a considerable bittock added on to their original length.

For four long days I rode on a man's saddle in the boy's dress that is absolutely necessary for any woman who would enter Westland across the Southern Alps, and always along bush roads or across tussock flats and river-beds. A bush road may be rough, but it is always exquisitely beautiful. The ferns and mosses covering the ground, mantling the tall trees to the very top, and clothing every branch in soft green, are indescribable, of every variety from giant tree-ferns forty feet high to the most fragile and filmiest maidenhair, and many kinds never anywhere but on the West Coast. It is all virgin bush, trackless save for a few roads, and containing no living thing except the wood-pigeons, the tiny fantails, twittering, blackcapped tomtits, and saucy bushrobins, without red breasts, but otherwise just like English robins.

seen

Twice I digressed to see two of the wonderful West Coast glaciers which come down to within a few hundred feet of the sea, with ferns and bush growing down almost to the edge of the vast masses of broken ice. It is very little explored as yet this district of Westland.

Once I found myself where several bush roads met, at a place called the Forks, consisting mainly of the hotel and post-office, and two or three unpainted shanties. The hotel was the very roughest I ever stayed in, even in the backwoods, and kept only by men; indeed I think there was no

woman in the whole place except myself. Sometimes, in these very primitive accomodation houses, one realises what luxury is camping out in a tent or under one of the huge West Coast boulders, sleeping in a bag, and being able to bathe in one of the fresh mountain streams next morning.

However, at the Forks, as everywhere else in Unknown New Zealand, everyone was as kind as possible. Everything was done for my comfort that could be done, and the dogs were immediately despatched into the depths of the bush to bring in the cows, that they might be sure of milk the next morning. After tea we sat by the blazing fire in the vast open fire-place, and talked to the old miners smoking in the comfortable warmth. Most of these old miners remember Mr. Seddon in his earlier days; they speak of him with friendly admiration, and are sometimes full of reminiscences of him before he became Premier. One cannot travel in Westland without hearing constantly of Mr. Seddon. Presently the Government road-overseer came in, with a pretty blue-eyed, fair-haired child, looking strangely out of place among those rough men. We fell to talking of many things, and naturally the conversation soon turned on Mr. Seddon. The overseer had stayed, when a young man, in the hotel kept by him in Kumara. Yes, it was a hotel much like the one I was in, a wooden, one-storied building, with the thinnest of walls and partitions, so that whatever went on in any one room could be heard with startling distinctness nearly all over the house. lt was, moreover, one of those hotels and stores combined seen but very rarely in New Zealand now. Usually the hotel bar is on one side of the house, and the store, where everything from groceries

to drapery is sold, on the other. "I used to see him a lot, then," the overseer continued, "but I never thought then he would become the big man he is now. I don't think any. one else thought so either. Oh yes, they all remember him everywhere, especially the miners, wherever you go about the coast." This I found to be true; the coast would be a storehouse of wealth for anyone wishing to gather reminiscences of the early days of a man the effects of whose personality permeate New Zealand, and who, if faulty, is nevertheless really remarkable. But it was Mrs. Seddon, I discovered, whom whom the overseer remembered with special affection. He was a very young man when he boarded in Mr. Seddon's hotel for a pound a week, and he was grateful for the kindly watch Mrs. Seddon never failed to keep on him. What

was

had chiefly struck him about the future Premier was his great fondness for his children. He recalled how, when elected to the mayorship of Kumara or to some other dignity (I cannot now remember what) Seddon drawn through the streets of the mining township by the exultant townsfolk. Through easy times and difficult, through good report and ill, he has never failed to represent the miners of Westland in the New Zealand House of Representatives. Everyone on the West Coast seems to know him, and they will talk to you about him by the hour together.

The Government overseer was a characteristic type of a West-Coaster. He asked me if I could stay a day or two with his wife, as she was very lonely in their little hut by the side of one of the long, solitary bush-roads. As I had to go on next day, he

volunteered to lend me a horse, and the next night I stayed at his sister's house. There is nothing within their power that they will not do for you, these Westland folks, uor, though the miners are reputed rough, and though in many ways the West Coast is undoubtedly a rough district, do I think a woman travelling along there need have any fear. There was no trouble that those rough men would not take, it seemed. One would wait for me by a river and let me ride his horse over it; another would carry my bicycle (a heavy, hired man's machine, very high-geared) over one of the ricketty suspension bridges, and send me in to his wife for tea. Everyone all along those lonely roads knows well when a stranger is coming along, for the telephone being attached to the accommodation houses they send the news along from one to another, when you left, when you are likely to arrive, and all about you. And there is a great difference between Unknown New Zealand and England, and indeed most parts of the world, -it would be a terrible blunder to offer money to anybody for any of these services.

It is a strange compound, this Unknown New Zealand, represented by the Premier of the Colony, and unswerving in its devotion to him. Nowhere, perhaps, are greater roughness, greater homeliness, a truer kindliness. Nowhere, perhaps, can finer scenery, of a wild mountainous description, still be found that so few eyes have yet beheld. Eternal Nature and the people that dwell there with it have this in common; both seem to bring one nearer to the primitive, original heart of things. C. A. B.

THE patricians of ancient Rome boasted of a kinship with the gods. Of the patricians of the modern city few are pure Romans of Rome, and of these fewer still can claim even a traditional descent from their great namesakes among the ancients. The greater number came originally from Tuscany and other parts of Northern Italy, and settled in Rome in the train of some member of their family raised to the pontifical throne. A very small number, of recent origin, owe their titles to wealth or to success in public and political life; some few trace their descent from medieval chieftains, and some are feudal in origin. These last, truly indigenous to the city and surrounding country, rose into prominence or fell, flourished or died out with the wars and factions of the Middle Ages. They made history for their city with barbarity and bloodshed for many dark centuries; but the records which tell of their origin and of their decay are scarce, and in many cases have been lost or destroyed. Powerful houses have become extinct or have sunk into obscurity. The great medieval family of Conti, counts of Segni, whose race gave four popes to Rome, including the great Innocent the Third, have disappeared from history, leaving as a magnificent monument to their greatness the huge tower which bears their name.

In the twelfth century the Sabine Savelli and the Jewish Pierleoni were great and prominent. Streets and piazzas called after them in the region near the crowded little Piazza Montanara testify to their importance. The Savelli dwelt in a castle in the

Via di Monserrato, which was afterwards turned into a prison, the Corte Savella, and here for a time the unfortunate Beatrice Cenci and her accomplices were confined. Both Savelli and Pierleoni successively occupied a stronghold built within the ancient walls of the theatre of Marcellus and the fortified palace against it, now the property of the Orsini. One of the Savelli popes, Honorius the Fourth, built himself a castle on the Aventine, and at one period the whole hill was entrenched, embattled, and fortified by them, the ancient temple of Libertas which crowned it being transformed into a citadel. These great buildings and the Savelli family have alike disappeared. Pope Honorius and his mother Vana, with various members of the family, rest in the Savelli chapel in the church of Ara Cœli on the Capitol. The Pierleoni, a rich and numerous race, descendants of a learned Jewish convert of the time of Pope Leo the Ninth, occupied important positions and made alliances with the great houses of Rome; and in 1130 a member of this Jewish family was elected and reigned several years in the Vatican as the Antipope Anacletus, an event unparalleled in history. By the fourteenth century the Pierleoni had also disappeared.

The ancient consular race of the Frangipani have left to Rome some fine monuments in the church of San Marcello in the Corso, and the name is still borne by a marquis in Udine, but they are no longer numbered among the princely houses. They earned their appellation of Bread