The British pressmen with the tour were particularly happy in their New Zealand newspaper associates. Amongst these gentlemen were Professor Guy Scholefield, who holds the chair of English Literature at the University of Dunedin and who knows New Zealand inside and out, from the historic as well as the modern point of view; and Mr. F. H. Morgan, representing that business-like organization the New Zealand Press Association, a practical journalist, a helpful colleague, and one of the best of good fellows. Although the main train journey was only decided upon a few hours before a start was made from Auckland, all the arrangements worked with extraordinary smoothness, and the number of people assembled at even the smallest wayside stations to cheer the Prince was astonishing. At Frankton, the first stopping-place after leaving Auckland, the gathering around the station consisted largely of the very railway men who had just been on strike. Their reception of the Prince had the special cordiality that carries a hint of apology. One of their number indeed, acting as spokesman, explained in a speech which could not be considered inopportune, how much they all regretted having been the cause of delay to the Royal tour. At Tekuiti, another small station, a more formal reception took place, in which some five hundred children, collected from the schools in the neighbourhood, participated with characteristic fervour. Through the night the Royal train traversed the red-pine Waimarino forest, mounted two thousand feet up the Raurimu spiral, passed the still smoking summit of the Ngauruhoe volcano, and emerged at daylight upon the rolling plains of the rich Taranaki dairying country. Here pastoral land, though still dotted with the blackened stumps of bygone forest, is worth to-day anything up to one hundred and fifty pounds sterling per acre. Thence, passing beneath the snow-streaked cone of the extinct volcano Mount Egmont, the train rolled out upon the open western coast, and entered the gorse-encircled city of New Plymouth. Here the Prince was given a picturesque reception beneath spreading _Insignis_ pines, in a natural grass-covered amphitheatre, of beautiful Pukikura park. Conducted by General Melville, commanding the district, he inspected a large gathering of returned sailors, soldiers, nurses, and cadets. He also went through the ranks of masses of school-children, who waved long wands topped with white and red feathery _toi-toi_ grass, and sang patriotic songs. In the course of a reply, later on, to a civic address, read by Mr. F. Bellringer, General Manager of the Borough, the Prince referred to the splendid prospects of the north-west coast, also to its fine war record, adding: "When I look at the development of this wonderful dairying country, I am amazed at the enterprise and energy which have achieved so much in little more than two generations."