Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/234

 direct call for the mightiest ocean-going vessels of the age.

En parenthèse, let us just for a moment recapitulate and array together these "biggest in the world" items, of which New Zealand is so proud. It is, indeed, a motley catalogue. First, the biggest dredge; then, the biggest water-wheel; next, the biggest trout; the biggest wooden building; the highest wooden bridge; the biggest calcareous terraces; the biggest bird (if the moa still lives); the biggest apples—those of the Waikato district; the biggest and most luxurious natural warm baths; the biggest terraced formation; the biggest glacier (that of Mount Cook—though that is doubtful); the biggest tattooing on the biggest reclaimed cannibal, with probably the biggest mouth; the biggest flax-bushes; the steepest railway incline; the biggest beds of shingle; the biggest concrete breakwater; the biggest cabbages—if we accept the cabbage-tree as generic; the biggest proportion of rabbits to the acre; the biggest artesian water supply (that of Christchurch); the biggest beds of watercress; the biggest colonial debt; and as its admirers say, the biggest hearted people, to which my own experience says amen; and the biggest future of any of Britain's colonies, to which with a Scotchman's proverbial caution, I say, "Weel, we'll see!" "Nous verrons."

One of the charms of Dunedin is its irregularity of outline. The streets are nowhere straight. To get even an approximate idea of the city as a