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