CHRISTCHURCH
Christchurch ranks next to Auckland as the second largest city
in the Dominion, and in its general plan and social atmosphere
is the most English of New Zealand towns. It was founded in 1850
by members of the "Canterbury Association," with the Archbishop
of Canterbury at their head, as a settlement in connection with
the Church of England, and was named after Christchurch College,
Oxford. The exclusive character of the colony was soon found to be
impracticable--all colonists were made welcome, and at the present
time, Christchurch is sometimes spoken of as the happy home of
cranks.
When the first colonists, the "Canterbury Pilgrims," as they were
called, reached New Zealand, they landed ten miles from the city of
to-day, at a port which they named Lyttleton, and the first rough
huts were built at the entrance to a long and sheltered harbour
running inland between wooded hills. Lyttleton is still the port
of Christchurch, and is connected with it by a railway tunnelling
through the hills. Christchurch itself stands on the edge of the
Canterbury Plain, with the Port Hills on the south, the ocean on
the east, and unlimited space for growth on the north and west.
In the centre of the city is the Cathedral, a fine building of grey
stone with a noticeable spire, standing in an open grassy square.
Round this square are set shops, hotels and the Post Office. From
the Cathedral Square many roads radiate, and electric trams run in
all directions--out into the country, or down to the sea shore,
five miles away. The streets are straight and at right angles, and
bear the names of English Cathedral cities--Hereford, Gloucester,
Durham or Salisbury--but High Street runs diagonally through the
squares; and the river Avon, bridged by many picturesque bridges of
stone or wood, winds through the town, preventing any possibility
of crowding or primness.
[Illustration: RIVER AVON AT CHRISTCHURCH IN WINTER. _To face page 81_]
All the streets are wide, and the river banks are green with grass
and rushes. In the streets and along the riverside grow English
oaks, sycamores, poplars or birches, and, more striking than all,
hundreds of weeping willows which here grow to a great height,
their supple branches drooping gracefully into the water. I have
never seen English woodland trees so beautiful in an English autumn
as the same trees are in Christchurch, where the leaves remain on
the trees later than at Home, and each leaf turns a vivid yellow--a
very pageant of gold in the clear bright sunlight under a cloudless
sky.
On one side of the town, the Avon flows through five hundred acres
of park-land, part of which is highly cultivated and planted with
flowers and trees from all parts of the world--a lovely garden
with trim lawns and shady, gravelled paths. The greater part of
the reserve is kept as a recreation ground for football, golf and
tennis; and has also broad, tree-shaded avenues, down which you
may canter on horseback, and see beyond the trees the blue rounded
summits of the Port Hills, and many miles away to the west, the
snowy peaks of the Southern Alps.
In addition to the Cathedral, Christchurch has many other churches
and very fine public buildings. Most of them are built of grey
stone, and all stand in prominent places, where they can easily be
found and admired. The Supreme Court of Law is on a grassy knoll
above the river; the Municipal Buildings and the Public Library
among groups of trees on the riverside; and close to the public
gardens are the Museum, the University buildings of Canterbury
College, and another group of buildings known as Christ's
College--a big school for boys, founded on the model of an English
Public School.
Christchurch Museum, like the one at Wellington, has a fine Maori
house with its series of carved ancestral figures; and here the
walls are of reed left intact as the Maoris made them, and the
house has on the outside a very ornamental display of painting
in a bold freehand pattern, coloured red, white and blue. There
are rare and beautiful examples of Maori cloaks; one of flax,
with the feathers from pigeons' necks woven in closely, so that
you see a rich blue and green feather garment; another was made
of strips of dog-skin woven in with the flax; another had white
dogs' tails, and yet another had feathers of the native kiwi, a
soft grey, like those of the emu or the extinct moa. There are many
curiosities from the islands of the Pacific; a large and fragile
canoe made of thick reeds fastened together with reed thongs from
the Chatham Islands; and from some island further north a most
gruesome curio--a record of a cannibal feast--a log of wood bound
with flax to a smaller piece, and between the two a neat bundle
of human bones. In an annexe built specially to receive it is the
skeleton of a great whale, eighty-seven feet long, washed ashore on
the west coast a few years ago. One pathetic and modern treasure
is a memento of Captain Scott's expedition--a small silken New
Zealand flag, a combination of the Union Jack and the Southern
Cross--worked for Dr. Wilson by a Christchurch lady. The flag was
stitched to his shirt and went with him to the South Pole and was
brought back by the relief party.
Christchurch has an Art Gallery with a small permanent collection
of paintings, and in it exhibitions are held of Arts and
Crafts--pictures, wood-carving, bookbinding or embroidery--to
encourage local talent; also a theatre, music halls and
picture-palaces, and halls for dances and lectures. In one big
hall was held, while I was staying in Christchurch, a series of
the "Dominion Literary and Musical Competitions." They lasted for
several weeks; and men, women and children from all parts of the
Dominion, "from Auckland to the Bluff," came to compete in singing,
instrumental music, recitations and impromptu speeches; the judges
were well-known men from Melbourne, and the general public was
admitted. Many of the songs and recitations were excellent, and all
were rendered without shyness or hesitation.
There are delightful homes in and around Christchurch--houses large
and small, always with some garden-space; and on the outskirts,
many of the houses have large gardens, excellently planned and
cared for. Sometimes the larger houses are of brick; but as a rule,
private houses are of wood and have roofs of corrugated iron;
though some newer roofs are of curved Marseilles tiles, or of
flat red tiles made in New Zealand. Every house has its outside
verandah, used all the year round as a sitting room, and often in
summer as a bedroom too.
In the hot weather it is easy to leave Christchurch, either for the
mountains or the coast. Many residents have little wooden cottages
or huts at the foot of the Port Hills, where there is a wonderful
beach of smooth grey sand running northwards in a forty mile curve.
Others seek recreation in fishing up one of the rivers of the
Canterbury Plain.
Always the holiday may be taken in the open air to an extent which
in England is seldom possible.