Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/142

 The best idea of the extent of the city can be gained by ascending Mount Victoria or Flagstaff Hill. It is a pretty steep pull, but the view from the summit amply repays you for your exertions.

How the city seems to open out the higher we ascend among the gorse and rocky spurs. Every valley is now seen to be full of houses. The harbour opens out into numerous long bays. The calm ocean (for, wonderful phenomenon for Wellington, the winds are lulled and the day is placid) lies spread out before us in all its bewitching beauty, flecked only here and there with a few small craft, lying idly rocking on the glassy surface. The long grey sweep of the rocky peninsula terminates in a busy swarming scene, where the gangs of men are lustily working at the fortifications. Beyond rises the abrupt ridgy backbone of hills which bounds the harbour to the southward, and following their craggy sweep from the lighthouse, the eye reaches the smoking valley of the Hutt, where the reek from the railway workshops rises in a murky cloud into the clear sky. The island nestles in the foreground like a fragment of the surrounding hills dropped into mid-harbour. Behind, we see the scarped cuttings in the cliffs; and the busy steaming trains running to and fro, disclose the meaning of these rigid, uncompromising lines, which at first puzzle one, and look like the trenches of an investing army.

Then comes the long semi-circular array of serried streets, noble buildings, imposing blocks,