Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/280

256 He learned, in response to his interrogatories, that Wellington has suffered at different dates from earthquakes; and at one time they were so severe and so numerous that it was thought it would be necessary to abandon the site altogether. Buildings of wood endure earthquakes much better than do those of stone or brick; and then, too, wood is a cheaper material. All through New Zealand the proportion of wooden buildings to stone, concrete, or brick is very large, and it is larger in Wellington than in any other city.

Many of the buildings stand on ground reclaimed from the sea, and the work of reclamation is still going on. High hills come down close to the original shore, and while they are good enough as the sites of residences, they are unsuited to the requirements of commerce, which prefers level ground. Wellington is the centre of a considerable steamship business; the lines from Sydney and Melbourne centre there; it is the port of the lines running between England and the colony, and all the coasting lines include it in their itinerary.

A pressing invitation was given to our friends to visit New Plymouth, the principal town of the provincial district of Taranaki north of the provincial district of Wellington. They at first declined, but afterwards accepted when they found that their time and engagements would permit their doing so. The journey was by coach seventy miles to Foxton, and thence by rail one hundred and ninety miles to New Plymouth. A railway is in course of construction between Wellington and Foxton, and is completed for a short distance from Wellington. The coach-ride was more interesting than coach-rides usually are, and is thus described by Fred:

"The weather was delightful, and we had seats on the outside of the coach, so that our view of the scenery was unobstructed. For the first few miles the road follows the shore of the bay; then it turns into a pretty valley, which was once heavily wooded but is now cleared, and no doubt deprived of much of its former beauty. We crossed the ridge which separates the harbor of Wellington from the ocean on the west coast, and after winding among a series of hills found ourselves rolling along close to the shore of the ever restless Pacific.—[N.B. No joke is intended in the juxtaposition of the last three words of the foregoing sentence.]

"The villages we saw had native and foreign names strangely mingled. One village was Johnsonville, and the next was Porirua; one was Horokiwi, and another close to it was Smithtown, or something of the sort. We wound through the Horokiwi valley, ascending steadily,