Like the province of the Netherlands the name of which it bears, New Zealand is a green land where water meets the eye everywhere. There the resemblance ends. The dull grey tones of the atmosphere of old Zealand, the deep, unchanging green of its pastures, the dead level and slow current of its shallow and turbid waters, are conspicuously absent at the Antipodes. When the New Zealander thinks of water his thoughts go naturally to an ocean, blue and restless, and to rivers sometimes swollen and clouded, sometimes clear and shrunken, but always rapid. Even the mountain lakes, though they have their days of peace, are more often ruffled by breezes or lashed by gales. In a word, water means water in motion; and among the sounds most familiar to a New Zealander’s ears are the hoarse brawling of torrents, grinding and bearing seaward the loose shingle of the mountains, and the deep roar of the surf of the Pacific, borne miles inland through the long still nights when the winds have ceased from troubling. It is no mere accident, then, that rowing and sailing are among the chief pastimes of the well-watered islands, or that the islanders have become ship-owners on a considerable scale. Young countries do not always carry much of their own trade; but, thanks to the energy and astute management of their Union Steamship Company, New Zealanders not only control their own coasting trade, but virtually the whole of the traffic between their own shores, Australia, and the South Sea Islands. The inter-colonial trade is substantial, amounting to between £5,000,000 and £6,000,000 a year. Much larger, of course, is the trade with the mother country; for our colony, with some success, does her best to shoulder a way in at the open but somewhat crowded door of London. Of her total oversea trade of about £37,000,000 a year, more than two-thirds is carried on with England and Scotland. Here again the colonial ship-owner has a share of the carrying business, for the best known of the four ocean steamship companies in its service is identified with the Dominion, and bears its name.