Dusk fell when the train was some twenty miles from Dunedin, the Edinburgh of New Zealand, but the sky was lighted throughout the whole of this distance by enormous bonfires, every village and every homestead along the line competing as to which could make the biggest flare against the forest and hills behind. Around these bonfires the local inhabitants had assembled and cheered the Prince as the train ran through. The night was alive with enthusiasm. Little old weary England, at anchor far in her North sea, might have been glad to feel it.
Port Chalmers, the Rosyth of Dunedin, was a wonderful sight. Coloured flares were simultaneously lighted in all parts of the town, as the train passed along the top of the cliffs. The harbour was thus shown up like an inland lake, in a setting of hills, against which houses, shipping and docks stood out in brilliant relief.
At Dunedin the train climbed down into a fairyland of electric illuminations, beginning at the railway station, where Mayor Begg and the members of the civic council were assembled. A procession in cars, through Princes Street and Stuart Street, to the Dunedin Club, where quarters had been arranged for the Prince, showed him half a mile of decorated, illuminated route, kept in absolute order by boy-scouts, cadets and school-children, though every one of Dunedin's sixty thousand inhabitants appeared to be participating in an orgy of cheering, flag-waving and flower throwing behind this slender barrier.
On the following day His Royal Highness attended an open-air reception, in the presence of an immense gathering in the city octagon, beneath the cathedral, the steps of which were occupied by a big chorus of girls from secondary schools. Here he received nine addresses of welcome. In replying, he told Dunedin that the part she played in the life of New Zealand was fully worthy of the noble traditions which her pioneers brought from the schools and colleges of the Old Country. Later on the Prince visited the hospital, whence he drove over the heights overlooking the shore, and down a steep winding track to Port Chalmers, where, amidst more decorations and cheering crowds, the Harbour Board and Local Borough Council presented addresses.