Page:Picturesque Dunedin.djvu/293

Rh And how much more difficult our task to describe the sempiternal beauties of this favoured locality?

Immediately beneath on the left the placid waters of the harbour lie sleeping in drowsiness, sinuously wending their course along through and among sandbanks and rocky isles, bluff headlands and receding bays, until absorbed in the great Pacific they cease to be recognised. Away to the right the majestic ocean spreads, its limitless bosom wide open to the gaze, so that far as the eye can reach any object on its surface can be descried.

Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked behind her at the city which she had left, but no such risk is incurred by looking back from the peninsula hills on the fair city of Dunedin. And perhaps from this point of view she is seen in her widest extent if not in her best display. Looked at from almost any point, however, the remark of inhabitants of Old Edinburgh regarding their fair city, that "she's a bonny toon," holds good.

The city itself with all its surroundings can hardly be surpassed anywhere for exceeding beauty. Whilst halting to look behind, the attention will be attracted by the coast-line to the south, which can on a clear day be discerned as far as the Nuggets, south of the Clutha, on which one of those beacon lights has been erected to guide the mariner along the frowning coastline.

And now in front of us the northern seaboard as far as Oamaru can with a good field glass be traced. A curiously indented coastline it is. Rounding Purehurehu and Hayward's Points, the furthest out stretch of the land on the north entrance to the harbour, lies Kaikai, or Murdering Beach, of which a ghastly story, as the name indicates, could be told. The coast here is hidden from our point of view by Mihiwaka and other heights. The land recedes from old ocean's embrace, again to project at Kaiweka, or in our less euphonious language, Potato Point, again to enfold the old sea-king in her bosom as far as Otokoroa and Parintaha, jostling him out again round the shore of Purakanui Bay and at Mapotahi, fantastically exhibiting itself at the erstwhile dreaded cliffs, around which the North line of railway sweeps along, allowing of a passing glimpse of