Part 4 (1/2)
A fairy city of lights, outlining spires, roofs and street lines, lay by reflection in the black water of a broad still harbour, as the train skirted the low coast of Petone, landing-place of the first white settlers, eventually pa.s.sing through extensive suburbs and coming to a standstill in the station of Wellington. Here the reception was a climax to the demonstrations along the journey from Auckland. Mayor Luke, supported by the city councillors, in ermine and gold chains, received the Prince, as he alighted from the train. Mr. Ma.s.sey, and other members of the Dominion Government, were waiting at the entrance. Outside, one of the smartest captain's guards-of-honour imaginable was standing to attention, with band and colours. Beyond, restrained by a rope barrier, an enormous crowd cheered and cheered. The eye travelled over the heads of the nearer people, and then further away, and there was no thinning off. One then began to realize that one was looking up a broad street which climbed a hill, and that the entire hill was a palpitating ma.s.s of shouting humanity, dimly seen in the half-light of the illuminations.
Eventually the Royal procession got off in motor-cars, which took an hour to traverse the two miles of decorated route to Government House, where the Prince was to stay, so dense was the crowd along the route, so anxious were the people to get near him. There was no bad crus.h.i.+ng, however, and nothing could exceed the good temper of the shouting, flag-flapping, clapping, laughing men, women and children, who pressed upon the motor-cars, formed a solid ma.s.s to the walls of substantial business houses on either hand, and crowded every window, balcony and roof commanding a view from above.
Similar scenes marked subsequent days of the Prince's visit to Wellington. Proceeding to Parliament buildings on the morning after he arrived, the pressure along the route was extraordinary. The town hall, where addresses were presented, on the way, was filled by all the most distinguished people of the country. The platform was occupied by the Members of the Legislature, headed by the Prime Minister, and including the Leader of the Opposition, the Mayors of the princ.i.p.al cities, and other representatives from all parts of New Zealand.
Proposing the Prince's health, at the official luncheon later in the day, Mr. Ma.s.sey, speaking in his capacity of Prime Minister, said everybody in New Zealand took personal happiness and satisfaction in the magnificent reception the Prince had had at all the centres in the North Island. ”And I want to tell him,” he continued, ”that his experiences in the North Island will be repeated in the South.”
One of the expeditions made from Wellington was across the harbour to Petone, where a well-staged pageant was held representing the landing of Captain Cook and his fellow adventurers from the barque _Endeavour_ in 1779, also that of the Reverend Samuel Marsden and other missionaries from the merchant-s.h.i.+p _Tory_ thirty-five years later. Naked warriors in war-canoes escorted each of the boat processions to the beach, and painted Maori chiefs received the white strangers hospitably on the sandy sh.o.r.e.
The occasion of the pageant was taken with happy appropriateness to present the Prince with samples of the finished product of the great industry with which the descendants of the early settlers have endowed New Zealand. The articles selected were rugs of beautiful softness and delightful warmth, made of wool grown in the interior, and carded, spun, dyed, and woven in mills close to the beach where the original missionaries landed. ”A field which the Lord hath blessed” in every sense of the term.
Petone is the parent of the capital city of Wellington where the Governor, Legislative Council and elected House of Representatives together make up the ”General a.s.sembly” which governs New Zealand.
X
SOUTH ISLAND
The still, crisp, autumn morning of the 22nd of May brought the _Renown_ into the silver inland sea of Charlotte Sound, with sunny hills sloping to the water's edge on either side--a great grey bird she looked, reflected in a jade-framed mirror. Rounding a steep guarding islet, the big s.h.i.+p anch.o.r.ed in view of the inner harbour, the pleasant little red-roofed whaling station of Picton climbing up the slope at the further end, the houses gay with familiar flowers, and homely with pecking fowls, amenities which one does not a.s.sociate with the wild work of the whaler. The industry as a matter of fact has declined from the status of its early days, though last year the blubber of forty-eight ”humpbacks” was brought into port.
The entire population--typical British folk of any country town in England--had a.s.sembled and gave the Prince a rousing welcome with the usual address. From Picton the route was by train through a rich pastoral plain, past Tuamarina, scene of a long-past tragedy in New Zealand history, where a misunderstanding resulted in whites being ma.s.sacred by their Maori neighbours, one of those lamentable episodes which the now united Dominion is advisedly engaged in forgetting.
At Blenheim, a prosperous towns.h.i.+p, eighteen miles from Picton, which was the next stopping-place, the train was exchanged for motors, and a visit was paid to the local racecourse, where the inhabitants of the town of Blenheim and most of the surrounding country had come together.
Amongst them was a fine gathering of returned sailors, soldiers and cadets, also some fifty Maoris with painted faces, dressed in feather-covered mats, who gave one of their grave, shouting, stamping, grimacing national _hakas_ in honour of the Royal guest.
From Blenheim the party started on a seventy-mile motor-drive to Nelson, an expedition enlivened by similar scenes, though the solemn gaieties of the Maoris did not occur again. The road, which was of macadam in excellent repair, ran first through the green, open valley of the Pelorus river, the fields dotted with sheep, with many a row of tall poplar trees, yellowing in the still autumn air. Wooded hills closed in, on either side, as the cars progressed, until we found ourselves speeding along a winding, unfenced shelf on the side of a precipice, primeval forest covering the sides of the gorge, to which the procession clung, like a string of flies to a window-pane, as it swung round corners, often with a wall of rock on one side and a sheer drop of hundreds of feet upon the other, a few inches of macadamized shelf all that interposed between the outer wheels and eternity.
The driver of the Prince's car, a grey-headed Anglo-Saxon, was descended from men who had driven mail coaches along this road seventy years ago, when the route was anything but the tourist trip it has become to-day.
The Prince was shown corner after corner where early settlers and their vehicles had gone over the edge, to be gathered together at the bottom in an advanced state of disunion. He heard also the oft-told tale of the Maungatapu highwaymen, white desperadoes, who once made these Rai and w.a.n.gamoa hills their home, until they were rounded up and hanged by indignant gold-miners and settlers for iniquities which included the murdering of a wayfarer, after stripping him of his purse, though all that it contained was a solitary s.h.i.+lling. No allowance seemed to have been made by his avengers for a certain natural disappointment. From the Rai and w.a.n.gamoa highlands the road led downwards, through a gradually flattening land of apple-trees, still laden with ma.s.ses of enormous yellow and red fruit, past hundreds of acres of bare poles, where hops had recently been reaped, amongst fields of peach trees set in ordered ranks, through villages of red-roofed, verandahed wooden houses, where well-dressed women and extraordinarily chubby and sunburnt children strewed the chrysanthemums of autumn as the Prince went by. The white macadam of the country ultimately gave place to the dark asphalt of the town. Tram-lines appeared in the track, and the procession found itself amongst hurrahing crowds in Nelson city.
Nelson is built round a central hill. Driving up the main street, the Prince was in a lane of people, a waving ma.s.s of union jacks extending up the business street on either side, while in front was a natural grand-stand surmounted by the Gothic windows of a pink, wooden structure which rose out of the top of a variegated pyramid and was the Cathedral. It looked as if balanced upon a hunched-up, gaily-coloured Paisley shawl. As we approached, the base resolved itself into school-children in white, soldiers and cadets in khaki, with a phalanx of returned men in their habit as they lived. A grey stone platform, with steps leading up to it, was occupied by Nelson's officials, one of whom read an address of welcome. The remainder of the variegated colour scheme seen from the bottom of the street was due to the costumes of ladies who stood so close to one another that no peep of the green background came through.
Here the Prince performed the usual ceremonies that awaited him. He inspected guards-of-honour, clasped the hands of returned soldiers and pinned on their coats decorations won at the front. He also expressed to the Mayor and the crowd thanks for the reception and for the loyal sentiments of the address, which would be communicated to His Majesty the King, as well as hearty appreciation of the wonders of the country, and of the good service of its people in the war, with sympathy for those who had been disabled or had lost friends or relations. He demanded a whole holiday for the school-children, with the immense approval of the beneficiaries. The National Anthem was played and everybody went off to dinner.
On the following and subsequent days very similar experiences were encountered. The route from Nelson, after leaving the level country where more receptions were held at wayside towns.h.i.+ps, was along the steep rocky upper gorge of the Buller river, a clear stream which flows in a series of cascades through a narrow winding cleft in the mountains. The slope on either side is covered with dense forest of tree ferns and birches, broken by areas where the undergrowth has been cut down and fired. Quant.i.ties of blackened tree-trunks and half-burnt logs, upon a carpet of newly sprouted gra.s.s, told of the conversion of the impenetrable primeval forest into productive dairying fields--gra.s.s-seed having only to be scattered broadcast over the ashes after a shower to bring a quick and copious emerald crop.
The way gra.s.s develops in New Zealand is a continual wonder. The winters are so mild, and the rainfall so abundant, that growth goes on right through the year. Maturity comes so rapidly that it is said to be quite a common thing for the farmer to plough up pasture and re-sow it simply in order to get rid of weeds, a heavy hay-crop being reaped the very next season. Large areas of permanent, original pasture were also seen, especially in the Southern Island--tussock gra.s.s, which, as its name suggests, grows in k.n.o.bby tufts, but is not on that account to be despised as fodder, enormous numbers of sheep and cattle growing fat enough to kill for the market without any other nourishment. Turnips are raised, to help out the gra.s.s in the winter months, but this is only on a comparatively small scale. The greater part of the stock is entirely gra.s.s-fed. Lambing, calving and milking take place in the open, and steers go straight to the packing establishments, without previously seeing the inside of a building of any kind. This accounts for the profits that are being made out of sheep-farming, stock-raising and dairying in New Zealand, in spite of the enormous prices paid for land which, in good districts, is now changing hands at figures ranging up to 170 per acre.
The Prince learnt, also, in his long drives through the forest, of the nature of the timber; of the virtues of the tawny-foliaged _Rimu_, or red pine, used for the interiors of houses; of the light, easily worked _Kahikatea_, or white pine, for which such large demand has sprung up in New Zealand and Australia for making packing-cases for b.u.t.ter, that fears are felt lest forests, hitherto considered inexhaustible, should become worked out; also of the _Matai_, or silver pine, which seems to last for ever, even when exposed on such hard service as that of railway sleepers, without any creosoting or other artificial protection.
About noon, the cars emerged upon an open valley, and the Prince was given a public reception at Murchison, a village of wooden houses, which were found in holiday array, the decorations including ma.s.ses of holly in the fullest Christmas glory of ripe scarlet berries, a curious contemporary of the orchards, still loaded with unpicked apples, that we had seen in the Nelson valley only a few hours before. In the Murchison district alluvial gold-was.h.i.+ng still goes on, but it is only a small survival of what once was a flouris.h.i.+ng industry, the yellow metal that filled the west coast with diggers, fifty years ago, having almost entirely given out.
Beyond Murchison, the gorges again contracted. The river became a white torrent, rus.h.i.+ng through a dark, winding channel, hedged with big, grey rocks, above which rose sage-green, forested mountains. About six in the evening we emerged on the Inangahua--”mother of whitebait”--tributary.
Here the valley widened out, and we saw a wonderful west-coast sunset.
The mountains took on vivid aquamarine blue and imperial purple, shading into palest pink, as they faced towards the light or away from it.
Against this background, yellow-frosted poplars and scarlet-leaved wild cherries stood out in sharpest contrast, the whole, with a pearly sky, producing an effect of exquisite fantasy. A soft brown owl, fluttering into our staring faces, recalled the fact that night had come, and that shelter was still far off.