Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/131

This page has been validated.
REMINDERS OF AMERICA
75

by curing. The dressed head was first steamed in an oven, followed by several weeks of sun drying and smoking over wood fires at night. Once the Maoris sold many of these preserved heads to traders in the Bay of Islands, who sent them to Sydney, whence they were shipped to Europe. The traffic finally was stopped by the New South Wales Government.

A block from the museum, standing in beautiful grounds, is a wooden building of peculiar interest. It is Government House, in which New Zealand's Governor resides for a time each year. In Government House it is easy to imagine one's self under the roof of Napoleon's St. Helena residence, for it is a counterpart of the exile's home.

In every New Zealand city there are reminders of America. They range from perambulators to harvesting-machines, from go-carts to railway locomotives, from whiskey to kerosene oil, from leather goods to sausage skins. All these and many other articles of commerce New Zealand imports from the United States. It has remained for Auckland, however, to introduce that cherished institution of America, the peanut roaster. On busy corners of Queen Street and Karangahape Road its cheery whistle is often to be heard. In New Zealand the peanut has been very much neglected. Perhaps its virtues are not appreciated, for it is still, in a measure, an alien struggling for deserved recognition. There were peanuts in Maoriland long before the arrival of the peanut roaster, but they usually were seen in disregarded