Nor, again, is this impression of largeness created by immense tracts of level monotony, as in so many continental views. There is none of the tiresome sameness that besets the railway passenger on the road from The Hague to Moscow--the succession of flat fields, sandy heaths, black pine woods, and dead marshes. For the keynote of our scenery is variety. Few countries in the world yield so rapid a series of sharp contrasts--contrasts between warm north and cool south; between brisk, clear east and moist, mild west; between the leafy, genial charm of the coastal bays and the snows and rocky walls of the dorsal ridges. The very mountains differ in character. Here are Alps with long white crests and bony shoulders emerging from forests of beech; there rise volcanoes, symmetrical cones, streaked with snow, and in some instances incessantly sending up steam or vapour from their summits. Most striking of all the differences, perhaps, is the complete change from the deep and ancient forests which formerly covered half the islands, to the long stretches of green grass or fern land where, before the coming of the settlers, you could ride for miles and pass never a tree. Of course many of these natural features are changing under the masterful hands of the British colonist. Forests are being cut down and burned, plains and open valleys ploughed up and sown, swamps drained, and their picturesque tangle of broad-bladed flax, giant reeds, and sharp-edged grasses remorselessly cleared away. Thousands of miles of hedges, chiefly of gorse, now seam the open country with green or golden lines, and divide the surface into more or less rectangular fields; and broom and sweetbriar, detested weeds as they are, brighten many a slope with gold or rose-colour in spring-time.