Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa

"Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa" by E. W. Howe is a collection of travel letters written in the early 20th century. It follows a wry Midwestern editor on an around-the-world journey, recording shipboard life and vivid stops in Polynesia and Australasia, with sharp, humorous observations on people, politics, labor, prices, and place. Expect brisk diary entries, portraits of fellow travelers and local officials, and candid impressions of colonial cities, native customs, and everyday details rather than grand monuments.

The opening of the collection finds the narrator at sea on the Sonoma bound for Sydney, noting Christmas and New Year celebrations, the equator “Neptune” rite, and the personalities of Captain Trask and an eclectic passenger list, then pausing at Pago Pago for a close look at American Samoa’s governance, missionaries, copra trade, and native life. He reaches Sydney, admires its harbor, samples city amusements, and comments tartly on dialect, prices, and labor disputes before transferring to the Maheno for New Zealand—enduring sleepless nights, watching albatross, and meeting an unwittingly comic “professor.” In Auckland he tangles with unreliable wireless, surveys hotels, Salvation Army bands, and everyday costs, then rides the government railway to Rotorua for lakes, geysers, boiling mud, and baths, touring Maori villages where springs heat homes and cook food, and where old beliefs and women’s roles surface in conversation. The section closes with more notes on guides, trout, the sheep-based countryside, government-managed tourism, and a candid admission that, after several days of geysers and penny-diving children, even wonders can grow tiresome. (This is an automatically generated summary.)