AFTER MANY YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 26, 30 January 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)

AFTER MANY YEARS.

(By Owen Hall.)

'•New Zealand at last!" The exclamation gathered a little knot of passengers to the spot, eager to see the first glimpse of the new land. It was not a new land to mc, and yet I suppose there was not one of the hundred or ko of passengers who looked at its somewhat misty outlines that afternoon with more of a "certain kind of curiosity than I did. Nearly twenty years! A long time imder any circumstances in the life of the. individual, and if not generally long in the history of a people or a country, long at least when it forms nearly a third part of that country's life. I stood apart and looked at it. The eager voices of those who saw it for the '•first time were asking a dozen questions at once of the few who had been Home for a trip, a.nd were returning after a few months' absence, and they in turn were telling of the places they knew where the new-comers intended to make their homes. I didn't care to join them or take any part, The places they spoke of—well, their names were familiar enough to mc; but the places, what would they be like? And the people— would there be any I should know, or any who would remember mc?

At any rate the coast had changed but little. The same old headlands and bays; the same little candy beaches, ou which the waves broke in sheets of white foam; the same green slopes, hedged in by fringes of darker scrub and trees. There was more grass, indeed; yes, a good deal more grass than 1 could remember in the old time on the slopes, and the forest line had shrunk back in places before the advancing foot of the settler; and what was that? Far away along the slope and among the trees, winding like a long serpent through the dark foliage, there was a line of white smoke or steam, which as I watched it crept on and on towards the north. I had half turned to ask what it could be when, as if to answer my unspoken question, a long faint whistle crept back to my ears —a railway whistle. Ah, I had forgotten after all; twenty years is a long time in the life of a young people, and I must be prepared for many changes besides newlines of railway.

My eyes came back at last from following the faint gray tra,ck of steam that clung to the tree-tops and floated up the sideof the range, when another exclamation behind mc made mc turn. We had just rounded the end of a promontory sloping steeply to the shore, and in ths deep bay beyond I could see roofs and chimneys outlined against the low hills, and in the foreground masts, and two or FJiree funnels seemed to rise behind a low tongue of land that ran out to sea. 1 knew, though I could scarcely say I recognised the place, that it must be Port Chalmers. It seemed at first sight the easiest tiling in the world to head for the port, and in a few minutes set jfoot on New Zealand once more, till the sound of an anchor, being let go that we might wait for the rising tide and a pilot to take us in, reminded mc how little, after all, modern improvements can make up for what Nature has left undone. The weather vas cold for the middle of November, and the hills behind Port Chalmers were capped with snow. This may have "had something to do with the impression it gave, hut the impression was not a favourable one. 1 had expected more light and sunshine, and even when at last we had steamed through what seemed to be rather an abruptly winding channel, and drifted slowly in to a long wharf —one of two that ran out from the shore —the place looked cold and lifeless. The wharves were new to mc, at least in anything like such dimensions, and the rails and trucks that came down to the end of it were still less familiar, but it all looked dull and deserted. It wasn't till I got ashore that I found I had had my first introduction to New Zealand's compulsory half-holiday; and ray first T was "that the good people of Port Chalmers must have gone out of town to enjoy it. Next morning I found matters a little livelier, but even then I can't say Port Chalmers struck mc as a success. There was something dull and almost sullen about the look of the place, and even the people didn't look lively. On inquiry I was told they were the, victims of a new experiment in prohibition, which , had been recently introduced, and somehow hardly appeared to suit either the place, or people. A native kindly informed mc that the women had been induced to vote for it because they were told the young men would have more money to" spend on them when they could no longer get liquor; and the shopkeepers helped them because they thought it would be spent with them. Very much, it was said, to the disgust of botli parties the young men now went to Dunedin for their beer, and when they were there, at any rate, did all their shopping too. Whether this was exactly true or not, it must be confessed that the people of Port Chalmers looked neither so happy nor so prosperous as their virtue deserved. I had seen prohibition towns in Maine, a-nd a few other American States, and somehow I seemed to myself to recognise the general resemblance. Personal \-irtue, enforced at the point of a policeman's baton, appears somehow to be a failure in a good many ways.

If Port Chalmers looks dull and its people unhappy, iho same cannot be said of Dunedin. In spite of wretched, weather, the city was full of activity* and the people looked both prosperous and contented. Dunodin has very greatly improved and extended in the last; twenty-five years: indeed, it looks aa i£ nearly all the land that nature intended to provide for such purposes had already been taken up for building on. In the last quarter of v century the city] has done n great deal of climbing; houses have perched themselves steep slopes, and streets have been made, on gradients that speak volumes for the lungs and hearts of the residents. It looks pretty and romantic enough, but the second reflection generally is the not unnatural one— wasn't it possible to find bo mc place less steep on which to build a city".' Probably ib hardly occurred to the first founders that It would ever he necessary U> provide room for a city of fifty thousand inhabitants. But for the extensive reclamations of swampy land in the river basin there would before this time have been no room for the extension of the. town for business purposes, and even the land thus made available will not afford space for a. city of a hundred; thousand. In the meantime, however, the enterprise which has extended the building ground will be enough to make a number of excellent business streets that should render Dunedin for a good many years to come as convenient in. that respect as any city in New Zealand. When all the reclaimed land has been built on, however, it is difficult to see where room can be found for further extension. The city lies in a cup among hills, all of which are too steep for traffic of any ordinary kind, so that ib isn't easy to escape the impression that, no matter how prosperous the district may be, or how energetic the people, the absence of anything like a first-rate port for ocean-going steamers, and the cramped character of the site on which the city stands, will effectually prevent) its ever becoming a very great conunercial centre. The climate, too. is against it. Ort the 20th of November every hill rising more than nine hundred feet high—and Dunedin is surrounded by such hills on every side—was heavily capped with snow. I was told that although this was not very common, it was by no means so exceptional as to cause much, surprise on the spot. Of course this is but a trifling reminiscence of the "Land o' Cakes," and its anything but genial climate, but in this part of the world people have learned to look, if not for better, at any rate for pleasanter things. My impression, as I pulled my great-coat more closely about mc, wasj I confess, that not only I, but a very; great majority of people, would prefer elossr settlement farther north to taking np their abode in the chilly city of; the south. In its streets and shops, its street; railways, warehouses, and factories, Dunedin has changed indeed from the town of twenty-five years ago, and certainly in all respects for the better. Even the people seemed to mc to have changed. The old familiar accents of Scotland are to be heard still, it is true, but not as they used to be. A quarter of a century ago there was no possibility of mistaking the origin of Dunedin and its people; it was Scotland, transplanted to a new soil and a sunnier climate. There is still, it is true, a great deal to remind a stranger of Scotland in the tones of the voices and the faces of the inhabitants—much, too* in the earnest purpose that rests on the faces, and makes life seem a. serioiw tiring—but twenty-five years have diluted it. The faces are not all of the same type now; many of the voice-s have, 'lost the accent; there is something more smiling in the expression, and les's severely purposeful in the manner than of old. On the whole, the new Dunedin looks as if both place and people had passed successfully through stages of struggle, and henceforward felt that they could afford to take life less seriously than of old.