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[Illustration: BERRIES OF SUPPLE JACK _Frontispiece_.]
HEATH, CRANTON, LTD. FLEET LANE, LONDON, E.C.
VIII FROM CHRISTCHURCH TO THE WEST COAST 86
COLOURED BERRIES OF SUPPLE JACK _Frontispiece_
ROAD BETWEEN FAIRLIE AND THE HERMITAGE 66
FRANZ JOSEF AND ALMER GLACIERS, FROM CAPE DEFIANCE 110
MOUNTS SEFTON AND FOOTSTOOL, FROM COPLAND PASS 132
MOUNT MOLTKE AND VICTORIA GLACIER, FROM CHANCELLOR RIDGE 159
SOUTHERN ALPS, FROM MOUTH OF WAIHO RIVER 164
The ship which brought me to New Zealand called first at Wellington, the capital city, with a population, as I afterwards heard, of ninety thousand.
Ships steam up a narrow, rocky channel into the harbour, which widens out into an area of fifty square miles, with deep water right up to the town, and wharves adjoining the chief streets. All round the harbour are hills, most of them now cleared of trees and grass-grown; but in 1840, when Wellington was founded as a Colony under the British Crown, it was a tiny settlement of huts ringed about by miles of untouched forests; and you realize with never-failing wonder how great a change has been wrought in a very short space of time. The town is built along the water front and up the hills behind, and is spreading every day higher up the hills and round the pleasant bays with which the rocky coast is indented.
To the stranger the noteworthy fact about these houses is the fact that they are of wood, and as nearly all have red roofs, when you see them perched upon the green hillsides, you wonder if you have come to some big toy town. Later you find that only the residential houses are invariably of wood; most of the public buildings--Post Office, banks, Town Hall and shipping offices--are of solid, grey concrete on steel frames; and both wood and steel are designed to resist the earthquake shocks which often visit the city, though not as a rule with great severity.
To a visitor from England all is strange and yet surprisingly the same as things left behind at home. Here is a big city with excellent shops, at which every imaginable need can be satisfied. You can buy clothes of every description--pretty dresses and hats or useful boots; there are jewellers and photographers; sellers of books, music or pianos; a depôt for Liberty's art needlework; and outside one of the florists' shops was a notice "Tree-ferns packed and despatched to all parts of the world."