A pair of old boots was once missing from a neighbouring station, and suspicion fell upon a swagger.

Justice was perhaps somewhat tardy in this instance, as it rested entirely in the hands of every tramp who passed that way; but at the end of some months the boots were found at home, and the innocence of the swaggers, individually and collectively, triumphantly established.
The only instance of harshness to a swagger which came under my notice during three years residence in New Zealand, is the one I have alluded to above, and contains so much dramatic interest in its details, that it may not be out of place here.
Although I have naturally dwelt in these papers more upon our bright sunny weather, our clear, bracing winter days, and our balmy spring and autumn evenings, let no intending traveller think that he will not meet with bad weather at the Antipodes! I can only repeat what I have said with pen and voice a hundred times before.

New Zealand possesses a very capricious and disagreeable climate: disagreeable from its constant high winds: but it is perhaps the most singularly and remarkably healthy place in the world.

This must surely arise from the very gales which I found so trying to my temper, for damp is a word without meaning; as for mildew or miasma, the generation who are growing up there will not know the meaning of the words; and in spite of a warm, bright day often turning at five minutes warning into a snowy or wet afternoon, colds and coughs are almost unknown.

People who go out there with delicate lungs recover in the most surprising manner; surprising, because one expects the sudden changes of temperature, the unavoidable exposure to rain and even snow, to kill instead of curing invalids.