Page:Emeraldhoursinne00lowtiala.djvu/172

86 me, and I should have liked to pore over them for hours had time been more elastic.

After luncheon we went to Lyttelton to see the port, and there we discovered that New Zealand is even better supplied in her coastal service than we had thought. For in addition to the Union Company’s fine fleet there is another which aids and supplements it, the Huddart Parker Company’s boats, about twenty of them, voyaging between all the Australasian ports. They are very fine ships too, and specially built for the comfort of passengers, beautifully fitted and equipped with all the latest improvements.

Lyttelton is a charmingly pretty little harbour, with a range of snow-topped mountains behind its encircling hills. The town lies on the slopes of the hills behind the wharves, and on the opposite hill-sides there are numerous farms and private residences, belonging to sheep-station holders.

We regretted that time did not allow of our visiting Akaroa, which is said to be the prettiest harbour of all, and which has more exciting historical associations than all the others, for it was at Akaroa that the French landed and very nearly changed the current of affairs for the new-born Colony.

But it would have taken us a day and a half to get there and back, so we had to content ourselves with hurrying back to the city for a motor-car which took us all round the suburbs and showed us larger Christchurch at its best. And we came to the conclusion that if Christchurch does not so forcibly strike the English visitor as a familiar and home-like place as her inhabitants expect it is not the fault of her founders.

It was intended to be exclusively a Church of England settlement, and in laying out the town the streets were named after Anglican Bishoprics,—Durham, St. Asaph, Cashel, Armagh, Tuam, Worcester, Peterborough, Manchester, Kilmore, &c., &c., and the two other squares in addition to the central, Cathedral Square, were named after Latimer and Cranmer. They planted a belt of trees round the town, which was divided in rectangular form, two miles by a mile and a quarter; reserved and planted with pines, birch, and elms, about four hundred acres of land on the banks of the river which they named the Avon, and which is now the chief beauty of the city, and built churches, colleges, and public buildings of stone. Some of the first settlers in Christchurch put high walls or fences round their dwellings; nearly all of them planted trees and made gardens, which are to-day the glory of the aristocratic quarters.

The evening we spent in a boat on the river, with a well-informed boatman who pointed out the colleges, hospital, Botanical gardens, and so on, as we slowly passed them in the moonlight, and as we were agreed that we could not carry away a prettier memory of Mr. John Godley’s modernised Utopia than that, we did not visit the Exhibition again but went straight back to the hotel.