Chapter XXIV: Australasian Journalism 258 (6)

I have wandered about this beautiful ship until I feel quite happily familiar with her, and I have finished up with a tour of her engine-room under the guidance of a chief engineer, a native of Port Chalmers, Otago. She is up-to-date in every detail, possessing everything in the nature of machinery to enable her to take a position in any ocean line whatever. In fact, she exemplifies the peculiar genius of the Scotch who, while keen to economise to the ultimate baubee, never begrudge the most lavish outlay which makes for efficiency and durability. I am quite proud to be a passenger by such a coasting steamer, and yet I am assured that the new ones now being built for the same trade are far ahead of her in every way. But then I learn that this Company, far away at the under side of the world, have in several matters of ship-owning been pioneers, owning the first steel steamer, the _Rotomahana_, whose experiences on a reef of rocks showed how vastly superior steel was to iron for shipbuilding, owning the first ocean-going turbine steamship, the _Loongana_, of twenty knots, presently flying between Melbourne and Launceston, Tasmania, and running their ships at present with 95 per cent. of British crews, while aiming steadily at their ideal, which is to have them all British.

It was an evil night, cold and drizzling rain with strong landward gale, so I did not stay on deck late, but retired to my spacious cabin, feeling certainly that I should be awakened at Lyttleton. And it was even so. When the steward brought my tea and fruit at 6.30 he informed me that she was alongside--a fact of which my senses had before apprised me. The weather was still coarse and blustering, the high hills which hem in the deep bay of Port Cooper, at the inward end of which has been formed the snug and secure harbour of Port Lyttleton, being covered with dense mist, and everything being especially cold and cheerless. When I was here before the majority of the ships lay out in the bay, in a somewhat exposed position, with a gale from the eastward. But even then they did their discharging and loading on the inner side of the infant breakwater, where they were perfectly sheltered and served by the railway which ran along the breakwater, but they were only usable by small vessels, such as the coasting steamers of the Union Company then were. Now I saw, with some considerable surprise, that not only has the original breakwater been nearly doubled in length, curving round in front of the town, but another arm has been extended from the opposite shore, so that the two now embrace a deep-water area as secure as a dock, within which great wharves and piers have been erected capable of accommodating vessels of the largest size. Close to us, at wharves where in my day only vessels of 400 or 500 tons could lie, were the _Oswestry Grange_ and _Turakina_, two 10,000-ton steamers of the Federal and New Zealand Shipping Company lines respectively. There were five or six of the Union Company's steamers and one or two small sailing craft, but not one representative of the old sailing ships that used to be such a feature of the port thirty years ago.

The feature that I have so frequently noted as characteristic of most New Zealand ports, viz., that of nestling at the foot of the ranges on a little ledge of foreshore, is especially noticeable at Lyttleton, which town looks so absolutely cramped for room that the houses in many cases seem to be clinging to the sides of the encompassing hills. The latter, too, look higher than usual, but that perhaps is because of their nearness to the bay. But long ago the energetic colonists of the province of Canterbury took the bold step of tunnelling through that lofty range and connecting Port Lyttleton with the great area of level country beyond, the far-famed Canterbury Plains upon which the city of Christchurch is built. In certain parts of the city on a clear day I have been bidden to look away off at the ranges eighty miles away over a level plain no part of which was ten feet above high-water mark, and yet it was not boggy or swampy. So I should say that Christchurch was probably more favourably situated than any other New Zealand town when all the requirements of a town are taken into consideration.

As to the appearance of Christchurch architecturally, I confess I was disappointed. Of course I know that the day was vile as regards its weather, and no place will look well in drizzling rain and driving gale. But still, I saw that the usual mean wooden buildings, interspersed with pretentious edifices of stucco-covered brick, were here, as in Wellington and Auckland, the regular style, and I was disappointed, because I had great hopes of Christchurch developing into a fine modern city when I was here before, and it seems to me (I hope its citizens will forgive me for saying so, but I don't suppose they will) to have become somewhat slipshod and down-at-heel in appearance. But, as I say, I had no fair opportunity of viewing it as a whole, and what I did see was a bird's-eye view at the best, my visit only lasting a few hours _en route_ to Dunedin.

We left the harbour at about five o'clock in the usual quiet, easeful fashion, despite the weather, I being mightily struck by the manner in which this 6,000-ton steamship was turned round in a space less than twice her own length without the aid of a single spring or warp, or a sound being heard save the occasional clang of an engine-room gong, and the deep sob of the propellers. It was a fine piece of ship-handling, and when she pointed out between the closely confronted ends of the breakwater and sped seaward, I retired below, glad I had witnessed it but conscious that I had gotten chilled through by the inclement weather while thus deeply interested. So I went early to bunk, knowing that at daylight again she would be off the well-remembered Taiaroa Heads, the entrance to Port Chalmers Harbour, and felt that I must be on deck to see her going in round the spit. Surely at dawn the next morning I came on deck to face a wind bitter as any North-easter at home--a searching, cutting blast, sending the spume flying high over the long sand-bank that blocks the entrance to Port Chalmers Harbour, all but a narrow, curving channel of deep water close under the high land of the Heads, which seems terribly restricted for such vessels as do negotiate it. To enter it is necessary to make a complete half-circle, and keep within very narrowly restricted limits--almost as narrow, indeed, as when entering a dock, but under far severer conditions as regards ship-handling. Bor! but it _was_ cold. I used to pride myself upon my indifference to cold, but this morning has searched me out so that I could hardly endure to stay on deck while the big ship ploughed steadily up the harbour and around the end of the sand-spit across the front of the pretty little port where thirty-two years ago the fine, big sailing-ships of Patrick Henderson & Co., New Zealand Shipping Company, and Shaw, Savill, used to lie thickly during the season. It looked so deserted now, so lonely, for since then the narrow and almost unnavigable channel up to Dunedin has been dredged and buoyed so that ships of almost any size can be brought up to the city wharves. But without a pause she swung round Flagstaff Hill, and held her way steadily onward until we reached the city front with its great extent of wharfage, and a big Shaw, Savill liner, the _Karamea_, was lying cosily alongside her berth, and was secured at once, while just a few carriers and cabmen asked for hire, without, however, any bustle or fuss, because it was Sunday morning. I walked ashore, and just glancing around at the many alterations in the front of the city that have been effected since last I saw this place, made my way up to where I had elected to put up during my stay.

It was a most pleasant change from all my late experiences in this thriving Antipodean Colony. I always have borne kindly recollections of Dunedin, as of all the Australasian ports I used to know seemed to fill the requirements of the mind as carrying on the traditions of the Mother-country; and verily there was no disillusionment. It was as it had been, only more so. No sham buildings here. Massive stone edifices of a fine type of architecture, and where brick had been used, as in the General Post Office, it was honest, good work, not at all pretentious or hiding itself under a flimsy veil of cracked stucco, but reminding me forcibly of the sturdy fashion of the Midland Railway Company's buildings at home, good red brick, well-pointed, with white stone facings and parapets, not needing to be ashamed by comparison with any other erections around. In that comprehensive glance, I saw that Dunedin had maintained her high promise in youth as regards her buildings, and whatever had been done since was surely in keeping. The streets were beautifully paved; there were many well-laid electric-car lines, and I noticed that up the sides of the steep, encircling hills there were cable-car lines running, enabling the citizens who lived in the suburbs to gain their homes with great ease and little expense. I saw that Dunedin was a city of which none of her citizens need be ashamed, and I was very glad. Moreover, although this southern part of New Zealand has an unenviable reputation as regards weather at this time of the year, the drizzle cleared away, and the sun came out, showing up the grand buildings clearly and pleasantly.

XX

SOME POLITICAL REFLECTIONS

Here, as elsewhere in New Zealand, I am astounded at the paucity of the population when looking around upon what has been done. It seems impossible that this beautiful city with its environs has less than 60,000 inhabitants. According to appearance it should have been 200,000; but there are the figures, and no amount of manipulation can alter them. I am told that the bulk of the trade of Wellington is carried on by Dunedin merchants, and certainly, judging by the names I saw over the principal mercantile buildings in Wellington, there would appear to be much truth in the assertion. That, however, will not explain why this wonderful little city still deserves the diminutive. It is, as I have elsewhere noted, the headquarters of the most compact and go-ahead coasting Steamship Company in the world--a Company, too, that is launching out now in directions that will make it anything but a coasting concern. Of course everybody (to use a colloquialism) knows that Otago is preeminently a Scotch Colony, but if the visitor did not know that, and had been an observant globe-trotter, he would at once perceive on arrival here that the Scotch passion for solidity and permanence of buildings so manifest in all Scotch towns, is abundantly in evidence here.

But perhaps I have said enough to show that the small southern city of Dunedin, hidden away in the far, mysterious South, has no need, as far as her experience and institutions are concerned, to be ashamed of her origin. She has indeed kept the flag flying. There is, however, one matter that is of great importance and may, indeed, have had considerable influence in delaying her growth. She possesses a splendid harbour in appearance, but its navigability is of a very low order. The entrance at Taiaroa Heads is so tortuous and narrow that it is an exceedingly difficult matter to get these modern big steamships in or out. Also the channels available for such vessels within the harbour are so restricted, and have such sharp curves, that the risk of taking huge ships through them are exceedingly great even up to Port Chalmers, one-half the distance from the city. The enterprise of the citizens has succeeded in so deepening the remaining portion of the harbour up to the city from Port Chalmers that vessels of 8,000 tons may and do get up there, but it is an arduous task, and when they do arrive they see confronting them a low beach separating that part of the harbour from the Pacific; which leads even the most casual observer to the conclusion that a very short cutting, far less expensive than the incessant dredging of the present channel, should suffice to admit the largest ships to the city wharves direct from the sea without danger or delay.

Here, again, we see the disabling, deterrent effects of a small population upon such improvements as this would be. Engineers make light of difficulties, which only exist in order to be overcome, but money in abundance must be had, and a small community must be taxed beyond bearing for a local improvement, which, when carried out, does not show an adequate return for so many years that the generation which achieved it may as well look upon it as money lost. You see it all comes back to the same starting-point--want of population. It is the crux of all questions out here, and to all appearance will still remain so. Very well; if the Colonists still are content to have it so, if the working class, which undoubtedly rules New Zealand now, is convinced that this condition is the best for them, I suppose it will so remain, and as to that they would probably say it is nobody's business but theirs. And there the visitor is compelled to leave it as long as he can; but it is ever present with him.

There is another aspect of these thriving Colonies that will not be thrust aside. How utterly, abjectly, defenceless they are, if the protection of the Imperial Navy is withdrawn. Here we see a city as beautiful as a dream. Her foreshores are crowded with stately buildings of stone which would do credit to any country, however old. The romantic heights which embosom the city are dotted with pretty homes to which the citizens ascend by means of the cable-cars, and right away down to the verge of the Pacific on the level ground cast up for ages by the sea lie in hundreds the comfortable dwellings of the workers. It gives a patriot a thrill of horror to contemplate the fate of such communities as this in the easily imaginable event of the Motherland being so hardly bestead as to need every warship she possesses for, not merely the defence of her own shores, but the safe convoy of food to Great Britain. Should one swift cruiser of the enemy succeed in eluding the pursuit of the home defending squadrons, and get out here, it would be an easy and, alas! a congenial task, judging from what we are compelled to read in the organs of public opinion in Germany, for such a vessel to reduce these smiling centres of industry to heaps of smoking ruins without incurring the slightest risk. In the face of this awful and, I am bound to believe, imminent danger, what are the Colonies doing? Paying a subsidy to the support of the Imperial Navy which is nothing less than a puerile insult--£240,000 all told, of which amount New Zealand, with her amazing prosperity, contributes £40,000. It does not seem to occur to these Labour members, these devisers of Socialistic plans for the benefit of their own class, that it is of little use to make a list of ideal conditions of life if they take no steps to protect the people who enjoy that life. The plain fact is that the whole of the Australasian Colonies are living in a fool's paradise in regard to this matter, and pay no heed whatever to the spectacle of the anticipating Teuton licking his lips as he thinks of the fat prizes that will presently fall to his prowess and the results of his forethought. As I have ventured to point out to them again, if only they would tax themselves in the same measure as we at home do, say at the rate of £1 5s. per head per annum towards the acquirement and upkeep of a Navy it would mean a sum of at least £5,000,000 per annum, or in three years enough to account satisfactorily for any hostile European squadron that should dare to venture into these waters on piratical purposes intent.

I do not care whether they acquire a purely Australasian Navy or subsidise a sufficiently powerful squadron of the Imperial Navy for Australasian defence. The thing is to prepare for the defence of this wonderful group of cities set on the borders of the Southern Seas, reared by men of our own race, Anglo-Saxon to the core, without more than a trace of that extraordinary mixture of breeds which is seen in the United States, making it the most polyglot population on earth, and filling the mind of the observer with intensest amazement at the interested cry of "hands across the sea" or of blood being thicker than water.

There is something about Dunedin that appeals very strongly to the visitor fresh from home, and I think that something may be summed up in the word "weather." During the winter at any rate Dunedin can compete successfully with us in Britain in the matter of atmospheric uncertainty of conditions and disagreeableness. It is no uncommon thing to get five or six different samples of weather in almost the same number of hours, each vieing with the other which shall be most unpleasant. It is a strenuous climate, and it breeds strenuous folk as it always did, and therefore it is that Dunedin strikes the visitors from Britain as being homely. And when you take a trip by train, as I did, across the level plains of the Taieri bounded by snow-crowned hills, and watch the sheep standing in the sodden turnip rows stolidly munching away with their backs to the bitter blast and driving snow, you find it hard to realise that you are not journeying North from Euston or King's Cross to Scotland in midwinter, until you come upon a farmsteading and note that it is built of wood, or miss the hedgerows and walls that bound the tiny fields of home.

There is another thing which I am bound to note in these impressions, and that is the apparent absence of rabbits in this country, which I have always been led to believe suffered from a veritable plague of these voracious prolific rodents. I pride myself upon missing nothing of consequence that passes within view as the train flits by, but I hereby solemnly declare that I have not yet seen a whole rabbit in this country. By which I mean that I have often eaten rabbit but have never seen a living one. I could not travel one-tenth of the distance in England that I have travelled here without seeing many rabbits and hares scampering across the well-tilled fields, and I have naturally felt very curious. Questioning such folks as I thought might know, I have received various answers such as that "You won't see them near the railway line" (why?) and "They don't show much in the daytime" (again why?); but the substance of it all seems to be that the rabbit-catching and exporting industries have been able to cope with what once was a pest so successfully that there is now a fear among a certain section of the up-country population that "rabbiting" will soon cease to be a lucrative employment. At any rate it appears certain that, without the importation of snakes or the inoculation by disease or any of the quaint schemes which were mooted in the legislative assemblies out here, the rabbit problem has been solved and does not now stand in the way of the South Island farmer raising lucrative crops.

Here (between Christchurch and Invercargill) may be seen a wonderful stretch of agricultural land almost as level as a table, in many places forty miles wide, two or three hundred miles long. Often it extends to the sea from the snow-capped ranges of mountains which decorate the sky-line inland many miles away, again it assumes the nature of a wide valley bounded on either side by ranges of hills. It is beautiful land, and in many places it is well cultivated, but an enormous amount of it is still only used for feeding sheep, which seems a waste when the uncultivable ranges are so eminently fitted for that purpose. In other places the rivers which seek the sea from the mountains having so large a space of perfectly flat country to pass over have meandered sluggishly over very wide areas, creating deltas of barrenness by reason of the detritus they bring down with them. These great spaces, over which the railway passes on low trestles, just present a perfectly desert surface of grey gravel and pebbles where not a blade of anything green is growing, which seems unnatural, remembering the extremely fertile character of most riverine country. And I could not help thinking that if some steps were taken to confine these wandering streams to a single deep channel for each, that many great benefits would result to the land itself, which would soon become cultivable, and also a means of communication with the interior by water would be created. Such an improvement, however, seems as yet a very long way off.

I am debarred at this present time from writing of Invercargill, the southernmost city of all British possessions, for I have not been able to get farther south than Gore, which, with a population of a small village, or about 2,000 souls, gives itself, with a sublime air of importance, the proud title of the "Chicago of the South." It would be ludicrous if it were not said in such deadly earnest, and yet when the visitor sees the energy and the up-to-date methods manifested by this tiny community, he is bound to take off his hat to its citizens. It is most brilliantly illuminated by electric light on tall standards, which would not shame any city in the world; nearly every house is also lit electrically and has its telephone; the streets are generously wide and mathematically straight; and the houses, although mainly of wood, are beautifully designed and most substantially built. Moreover Gore, like several other similar towns in the South Island, has decided by a majority of its citizens that it will not allow the sale of any intoxicant, and consequently there are no liquor saloons. Whoever feels that he needs stimulant of this kind may import it and keep it in his house, or give it away, but he may not sell it under a first penalty of £50, and on a second offence, three months' imprisonment without the option of a fine. Gore has just entered upon a second period of three years of "no licence," so presumably the citizens find it works satisfactorily, and undoubtedly the system is spreading. The visitor will be wise to offer no opinion upon the subject, seeing that it is a matter of purely local concern to a self-governing community.

XXI

NORTH AGAIN

I am glad to have seen Gore and met its genial, hospitable citizens, but I am not sorry to get away, since during my stay a blizzard of great virulence has been raging. A tantalising kind of weather indeed. For occasionally there would be a burst of brilliant sunshine and the sky would look serene. Then with amazing celerity a black mass of cloud would arise from behind the ranges, overspread the sky, and burst upon us in a perfect hurricane of biting blast and blinding snow. But upon entering the train and starting for the north it was wonderful to see how rapidly we ran out of it into balmy, summer weather, until when we reached Dunedin we seemed to have entered another season altogether than winter, as fine a day indeed as heart could desire.

I might just remark here that the New Zealand Government Railway rolling stock is all American, but the cars are of mixed type, some being like our corridor cars at home, only with the corridor wired at the side instead of being perfectly closed in like ours, and others of the open American type, seats on each side with a middle aisle. They are fairly comfortable, but the speed is slow, even on the express trains the pace is only about twenty-five miles an hour. The line is usually single and laid American fashion, that is, the rails are spiked down to the sleepers with hold-fast nails in a fashion that to us at home seems quite casual and temporary. The officials are genial, but being Government servants, which always seems to mean something different to public servants, they do not waste any time in superfluous civility, and they come down upon any hapless passenger who unwittingly infringes a bye-law with draconian severity. But with all that they are courtesy and gentleness personified when compared with the autocrats on the American railways, who actually resent savagely being spoken to civilly, and proceed to insult a passenger who is accustomed to speak to those whom he pays to serve him as he would like to be spoken to himself. Our Colonial brethren do not make that grim mistake, though quick to resent any needless assumption of superiority.

It has been a great pleasure to renew my acquaintance with Dunedin, and to note the development of its shipping facilities, as well as the way in which the high character of the city architecturally and structurally has been maintained and developed, although the latter phase is much less important than I was prepared to find it. But principally I was interested in Port Chalmers, that idyllic spot for beauty of situation which has been left stranded, as it were, in its little nook by the passing of the traffic up the tortuous estuary to Dunedin. It is almost as it was when I last saw it, thirty-one years ago, in a state of arrested development. With the exception of three of the Union Company's steamers, which were lying there coaling, the port was deserted, instead of having quite a fleet of fine sailing ships such as used to lie at its wharves in my day. Such traffic as it has now is confined to the large steamers of Messrs. Shaw Savill, the New Zealand Shipping Company, and others which do manage to get up as far as this, but seldom venture up to Dunedin, as being too risky and involving besides too much loss of time. I really experienced all that sense of everything being dwarfed and mean, such as so often strikes a boy upon revisiting the scenes of his youth in some sleepy village or some small town after being away in the great world for years.

The only change of any importance noticeable was that a fine new dry dock was being dug, which, I have no doubt, will be a very great boon to the big ships which call here, but I should think will be mainly used by the fine vessels of the Union Company. So I bade farewell to the pretty little old-fashioned place, with its lovely views over land and sea, and sped on over the railway towards Christchurch (it was being commenced when I was here thirty-two years ago) past the picturesque place where I once essayed farming--Purakanui--and catching occasional glimpses of beautiful bays, all silted up and worthless for navigation or shelter except by the smallest craft, to the thriving towns of Waitati, Oamaru, and Timaru. This is the unsheltered coast-line known as the ninety-mile beach, where the communication with the land depends upon the weather, but the richness and fertility of the great plain extending inland assures the prosperity of the towns studded along the harbourless shore.

It is pleasant travelling, especially on a day like this, for the train although slow is very comfortable, and there is an excellent dining-car with good and plentiful food at a low rate compared with what is to be found in any other country in the Old World or America. And here I think it only just to say that wherever I have travelled out here I have found the same thing--the very best of food, plainly but excellently cooked and nicely served at a very low cost. I know that my ideas in the matter of food are considered to be old-fashioned and heterodox, but I cannot help that; my deliberate opinion is that in the matter of food which is honest and good without being ambitiously messy and ostentatiously disguised, the Antipodes can challenge the world. As far as food is concerned, it is like travelling from one home to another.

The extent and fertility of this great plain, bounded on one side by the sea and on the other, far inland, by snow-capped ranges of mountains, is very impressive, and when occasionally the train pulls up at a thriving, bright town like Ashburton, and the traveller notes the neatness of the roads and comfortable appearance of the buildings, and the utter absence of squalor and grinding poverty, such as are, alas! too noticeable at way stations in America and in our own country, he feels a glow of satisfaction at being permitted to pass through such a land of plenty and of peace. And so we roll on into the thriving city of Christchurch, which is built entirely on the flat and is consequently not so picturesque or imposing as Auckland, Wellington, or Dunedin, but gives an impression of solid prosperity as well as of great extent, remembering always the number of its population.

But I am _en route_ for Wellington, and my train is timed to catch the ferry-boat _Mararoa_, a 3,000-ton steamship of fifteen knots an hour, that, leaving Lyttleton (the port of Christchurch) at 5.30 p.m., is timed to be in Wellington at daylight, or, say, about 6.30 a.m., having in the meantime covered a distance of over 170 miles. She is a beautiful vessel, fit for any service in the world, but with the modesty generally attendant upon all such undertakings out here, the voyages which she and her sister ship, the _Rotomahana_, make on alternate days, are called the Wellington-Lyttleton ferry service. The only similar service that I can think of at present for distance and speed is the Fall River Line from Fall River to New York. But there is really no comparison possible. Those great top-heavy, gorgeously decorated vessels are obviously designed for service in sheltered waters, and are entirely unfit for a sea-voyage, while, for all their gingerbread decorations, I think meanly of the comfort they give for the money that is paid. However, as one is almost a lake service and the other must needs be prepared to encounter some of the worst weather in the world, it is, as I said, impossible to compare them.

The train, halting a very brief space at Christchurch, speeds on through smiling suburbs until it enters the great tunnel under the mountain which shuts off Christchurch from the fine harbour of Port Cooper. It stops for a few minutes at Lyttleton town nestling on the foreshore, then runs right down alongside of the ship so that the passengers have merely to step from the railway car to the gangway of the fine steamer, which will presently slip out to sea, and, in the face of any weather, land them at the wharf at Wellington as soon as they have rubbed the sleep out of their eyes and got ready for business.

And so with the rest I find myself at the capital city again, which, in strong contrast to the stormy South which I left the day before yesterday, lies bathed in golden sunshine, the air balmy as our summer, and the green, encircling hills with their cosy homes peeping out from the rich verdure, giving no hint that this is the winter-time. Truly a goodly land, well-favoured by nature, and in the hands of a people determined to keep its blessings as far as may be under their own control, unable to see any sense in following the example so persistently set them by the purblind people at home, of handing over its choicest benefits to the unthankful alien or the sneering inimical foreigner. It is of no use looking here for any specimens of that great and influential class at home who are the friends of every country but their own, and who, while professing to labour for the good of the people, persistently encourage the efforts of those without, who hate Britain and all her works, leaving no stone unturned to undermine her position in the world and reduce her to a dependency of their own.

The work of the Wellingtonians in developing their city has been astounding. On my previous visit I noted the extension of the residential quarters of the city to the slopes of the encircling hills, but I did not dream of the extent to which this has been carried. It came as a positive shock to me to learn that land in this rugged country, which is really as picturesquely uneven as Switzerland, without, of course, the enormously high mountains closely guarding it, has increased in value within the last generation from almost nothing to a thousand pounds an acre! Of course, engineering science in getting cable and electric cars running up the precipitous slopes of these hills is largely responsible for this inflation of land values, but comparing these values with those obtaining at home within easy reach of our great business centres, I am filled with astonishment at the price of land in New Zealand. I am strongly inclined to think that there is something artificial and temporary in such prices, especially when you remember that upon such enormously expensive land buildings are erected that, although beautiful to look at and entirely in accordance with their romantic environment, are practically all of wood. Still wooden house building has reached a high level of excellence in Wellington. If you can shut your eyes to the material, you will find nothing to gird at in the quality of the houses or their interior finish. In a word, they are beautiful and comfortable as well.

It is not often given to the citizens of an important city to be able to get from their offices in a few minutes to homes that occupy exquisitely beautiful points of advantage as regards scenery, and at the same time commanding an outlook of immense area over the sea and the harbour of their city. This is essentially the case in Wellington, and it is an advantage that is fully appreciated, judging from the extraordinary development that has taken place within the last few years. The amount of land available for the erection of business premises near the wharves was very little, but that has been rectified by reclamation, more evident here than anywhere else in New Zealand, where the extension of foreshores and their conversion into busy business thoroughfares is carried to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world. Here are to be seen splendid avenues of traffic, bounded on both sides by grand buildings, where a generation ago the sullen sea beat incessantly upon long, barren, shallow beaches. The aggregate cost of these great works has been enormous--phenomenal, when it is remembered how small are the numbers of the population that have achieved so great a result; but the returns from this enterprise have undoubtedly justified the keen foresight and business aptitude which has energised them as well as prompted the outlay. It is with no ordinary feeling of satisfaction that I here bear my tribute to the go-ahead qualities and the enduring work of these makers of the Britain of the South.

XXII

THE HEART OF THE NORTH ISLAND

And now for a brief spell I have been privileged to go into the interior of the country, although, be it noted, the traveller never gets very far from the sea. I am to-day paying a visit to a town of which I have heard a great deal more than would at first sight seem to be warranted by the official numbers of its population. Palmerston North is on the great central plain, which is, equally with the South Island, a feature of the formation of New Zealand. There are two ways of getting there from Wellington. One direct by the privately owned Manawatu Railway, and the other circuitously by the State Line. And as travellers usually do not care to waste time, however much they may have on their hands, it follows that the privately owned line is extensively patronised. Its chief station in Wellington is not, to say the least of it, at all imposing, being only a collection of humble wooden buildings. But then all these Antipodean railways have followed the example set them by the Yankees in that they do not believe in spending overmuch money upon stations or permanent way, although, to do them justice, they are not nearly so casual in their arrangements as are the Americans, who seem to regard, in railway matters especially, expenditure such as we at home deem a necessity, sheer improvident extravagance. Another thing which I was sorry to see was that the rolling stock was exclusively American, with all the temporary features that implies. But this is, of course, purely a domestic matter in which a visitor from home has no right to interfere.

I confess, however, that I was not prepared for the question put to me in the train to-day by a middle-aged gentleman who was the editor of a newspaper devoted to the farming interest. In all seriousness he asked me whether we had any dining-cars on the railways at home! I was compelled to ask him whether he was joking, but it appeared that he was quite sincere in his ignorance, and it then appeared in further conversation that he had a fixed idea that all our catering arrangements in England on the railways had been taught us by the Colonies. Now it is quite true that there was a good dining-car on this train, wherein was served a comfortable, well-cooked meal, but in all its appointments it was very far behind what we get upon any of the long-distance lines at home. And when I endeavoured to explain the difference between the train in which we were then travelling and a Great Northern or Midland express, he said, "Oh yes, but then you have the advantage of the broad gauge!" It was impossible to pursue the conversation at any length, because I could see that he did not believe a word I was saying, so I relapsed into a book.

Now no one would dream of comparing the railways in a settled old country like Great Britain, where safety, permanence, and comfort of travelling are the main considerations and high speed is a necessity, with the first tentative efforts at railway communication in a new country where people are quite satisfied with an average speed of about fifteen miles an hour, and where, the line being single, it is necessary to wait at certain stations until the train bound in the opposite direction has passed. I am very glad indeed to say that the railways in New Zealand are well managed, the stations generally quite adequate and easy of access, and the refreshment business, on the prohibition principle, well attended to. But when I am calmly asked whether we know anything about railway management at home, I find it difficult to keep from making sarcastic remarks, as I do when I am told that agriculture in Britain is still generally conducted on the lines of reaping-hook or sickle and flail.

Ah well, I suppose this curious state of mind will continually be found among those who have been bred or born in a new country, and I do not know that it does much harm. They are so inordinately proud of the progress they see that they cannot imagine anything being more up-to-date or go-ahead.

The distance from Wellington to Palmerston North is about forty miles, and leaving there--Wellington--at 8 a.m. we arrive at 11.40, this being an express train, the next train leaving at 10.10 arrives at 4 p.m. The journey was not in any way remarkable, except for the occasional glimpses of great stretches of down land, literally covered with fallen, bleached trees, in many places so thick that they covered the whole ground. This is where the fire has been run through them, and is the preliminary process of making grazing land. But I could not help thinking that it was a sinful waste of timber, either for firewood or paper-making, and no attempt was being made to clear the land or to expedite in any way the process of its conversion into pasture. I ventured to ask several times whether nothing could be done with all that wood. I always received the same answer, "that it did not pay to cart it away for firewood, and as for dealing with it in any other way, well, labour was too dear." So it remained an eyesore and an hindrance. Occasionally, where the fallen trees were fewer in number, cattle were to be seen grazing between the trunks and apparently doing very well indeed. Where the land was quite clear, as on our Wiltshire and Sussex downs, there were plenty of sheep, all looking in splendid condition, so that the pasture must be of a very high quality. Here and there the sheep were feeding in fields of turnips, being specially fattened I suppose, but these were few and far between.

One curious feature of the land to me was its extremes. It was either very flat or very hilly; no gently undulating country such as we have so much of at home; but all of it worth money, and big money at that, mostly for grazing purposes. Every little town that we passed through wore a delightful air of quiet comfort, while both men and women looked fairly well-to-do, although they let their children run about barefooted in a way that is disconcerting to an Englishman. That, however, is probably only a fad, since the kiddies looked anything but poor in other respects.

Palmerston North came really as a surprise. Owing to the fact that it lies upon a perfectly level plain it is not nor can it be picturesque; indeed it might, only the word sounds unkind, be called straggling. It certainly does cover a very large area for its population, and those responsible for its laying-out have been most generous in the matter of streets. Also wherever there are any public buildings they are as usual in the North Island of the prevailing construction, stucco-covered brick. I have often wondered what could have become of all the plasterers when stucco went out in England. I know now: they came to New Zealand, and here they revel in their favourite medium, imitating stone to their hearts' content.

There is a spaciousness about Palmerston that is delightful. It fills one with the idea that it must some day be a great city, although the railway running along through the main street for its whole length bordered by grassy breadths upon which may be seen feeding the casual horse or cow, does not inspire much hope that it ever will be. Nevertheless, there is a great hotel a-building which would not be unworthy of a town ten times the size, and so I feel that there must be some basis for all this confidence. Here let me say with all the emphasis at my command, that my first impressions of hotel life in Australasia given you in my second chapter have been deepened and confirmed by every fresh one that I have stayed in, until I am fully prepared to swear that of all the countries I have ever travelled in Australasia is easily first in the matter of hotels. The food is always excellent, well-cooked, and abundant; the accommodation is invariably comfortable, the attendance all that could be wished, and the prices on an average about one-half of what they are anywhere else. Sorrowfully do I confess that I have never stayed in any British hotel that was nearly as good, as far as personal comfort is concerned, as the worst hotel I have sampled out here. These hotels are less pretentious in appearance, but they have no irritating extras, baths are not considered a luxury for which you must pay a high price, but are free at any time; a cup of tea at early morn in bed, and a newspaper is brought you and not charged for, afternoon tea is also free, and--whisper it gently!--if you are meanly inclined, you need not tip anybody. I would rather stay in the smallest way back hotel in Australia or New Zealand that I have visited than the most swagger hotel in London, while as for America--but there, to stay in any American hotel is to suffer penance for sin unrepented of--and the punishment is fully adequate.

Palmerston also boasts the finest opera house (so they say) in the Southern Hemisphere. I am inclined to take this sweeping statement with a considerable grain of salt when I remember Buenos Ayres, for instance, but there is no doubt that this opera house, built by the municipality, is a splendid building, worthy of Melbourne or Sydney as far as its appointments, size, and appearance is concerned. Of course it is decorated with stucco on an exceedingly ambitious scale, and therein, to the visitor accustomed to the stone erections of other cities more favourably situated for durable building material, is to some extent discounted. Moreover, it is a debatable point whether any municipality has a right to burden its citizens with such a heavy debt as this has entailed for such a purpose; but as this is a purely domestic question it may safely be left.

Its public buildings are dignified and stately, the Post Office especially being ten times finer and a much larger building than the Post Office in Auckland, which has nearly ten times the population of Palmerston. Yes, it is a bright, breezy, ambitious place, whose citizens manifest the most robust faith in its future, although, of course, there are many pessimists among them who talk dolefully about outrunning the constable, &c. It is the centre of a large dairying district, and from hence comes a great quantity of the splendid butter and cheese which is largely consumed at home. It is indeed an ideal country for such a purpose, owing to the richness of its pastures and the mild, equable climate which it enjoys. And I have been told that if only the farmers would manifest a little more energy the yield might be largely augmented with but slight increase of outlay.

I went on from here to Wanganui, on the beautiful river of the same name, through a most beautifully diversified country, the level plain gradually narrowing as we went north, although there were occasional stretches of rich-looking valley land. A change has to be made at Aramoho Junction for Wanganui, the train from Palmerston going on direct to New Plymouth, Taranaki, where it connects with the steamer for Auckland. Wanganui is only two miles from the junction, and when reached comes as a great surprise. It is still more difficult here than elsewhere in New Zealand to believe that so beautiful and imposing a town, with such fine public and private buildings, can be run by a population of under 10,000 all told. The hotel in which I stayed was, in every detail of its appointments--in everything, in fact, that a hotel should be--worthy of any town or city in the world, while its charges were simply ridiculous.

Here I came in contact for the first time to any extent with the civilised Maori. He and she pervaded the streets of Wanganui in almost equal numbers with the white folk, and I learned that there were more natives in evidence here than in any other town in New Zealand. But it is not fair to begin this subject at the fag end of a chapter and so I will deal with it in the next.

XXIII

THE MAORI

Like all other primeval races the Maori does not bear the transition to civilisation at all well. The noble savage in his native state is a picturesque and romantic figure, with of course many customs that we pale children of modern days cannot away with. Now the Maori has unquestionably many noble qualities, but he shares with all other native races an intense and invincible repugnance to settled employment. As long as he can get his few primitive needs supplied he will not work. In his native wilds this reposeful languor is graceful and correct; it fits in with his environment. But in a town the Maori, with the garments of civilisation hanging awkwardly upon him, lounging at the street corners apparently indifferent to the flight of time, or indeed anything under the sun, will not appear to the visitor as anything else but an exceedingly unprepossessing loafer. It is necessary, in order to keep back the feeling of repugnance that will arise at sight of these groups of huge, seedy-looking men, to remember that they are the descendants of the original owners of the soil, and that they are now existing peacefully upon the rents of their lands leased to the energetic white settlers.

In Auckland I noticed a good many Maori men and women about the town, all the latter and most of the former looking curiously slouchy and ungainly. But they were, after all, an exceedingly small item in the thronging population, although they were usually found on the street corners in the busiest part of the city at all hours of the day, looking as if nothing that ever happened could possibly concern them. Here in Wanganui, however, every street corner has its knot of lounging Maories looking curiously out of place in the midst of civilisation. They are all, men and women alike, of splendid physique, but of course too fat, owing to the lounging habit, all equally, of course, are clad in European clothing, and all without exception strike the visitor as being exceedingly undesirable and unornamental. For they have, with but rare exceptions, a peculiarly unprepossessing cast of countenance, and withal an expression of languid contempt for the _pakeha_ (white man) who goes bustling by that is not good to look upon.

Now I know that this is very harsh-sounding, but it expresses my feelings exactly. I grant the Maori exceptional ability, especially as an orator; I know that he is the original owner of the soil for which he fought so doughtily that his enemies conceived a great respect for him. I am sure that he is fully entitled to all that he receives by way of rent for his lands and to the reservation which no white man may interfere with; but I do wish he and his _wahine_ would not get into shabby European clothing and hang about street corners in the towns. If they want civilisation, let them by all means become civilised and fit in with their surroundings; but if not, why! oh why do they not stay in their native encampments and loaf to their heart's content where loafing looks natural, dignified, and proper?

In order that I may not be misunderstood, I hasten to say that in the colleges and in certain Government positions are to be found some most admirable specimens of the Maori race, rising to a height of intelligence and responsible feeling such as a negro seldom or never attains to, and with an admixture of white blood, whether half or quarter breed, many splendid specimens of manhood, both physically and intellectually, are developed. The Hon. James Carroll, Minister for Native Affairs, is a fine specimen of these last, and a gentleman whom it is pleasant to know.