AFTER MANY YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 44, 20 February 1904, Page 9 (Supplement)

AFTER MANY YEARS.

(By OWEN HALL.)

Wellington certainly looks best from the harbour. The feeling of want of space which is difficult to avoid on shore, penned in between the circle of hills and the harbour, gives way, as I found, to one of interest and admiration as one watches the signs of active business which gather round the shipping. If Nature has not been in any other" respect particularly liberal to the capit-il city, she certainly was so in the central situation in which she placed a good harbour, and it is greatly to the credit of the inhabitants that they have shown so much energy in making their city and harbour the great distributing centre of the trade of the colony. The extensive! and busy wharves, crowded with ship- i ping that quite threw in the shade what : I had seen at Lytielton, and still more j at Port Chalmers, formed the foreground j of the picture in our last glimpse of Weilington, and if they did not fully vindicate the wisdom of those who removed' the capital from its original site, at! least proved they were right in looking for a prosperous future as a result of its position. We had experienced no wind at all. for a wonder, during our ! two days' stay, but now, as we headed for the entrance of Port Nicholson, we were met by a breeze that recalled' the lively memories of other years, when the frequent shake of the genial earthquake was relieved by the tornado-like blast of the healthy "breeze for which the harbour was famous. j

The wind was coming into the straits from the east, and for several hours we enjoyed an opportunity of seeing and feeling what it could do by way of rais-. ing a sea along the coast. We had a full cargo both of goods and passen-l gers for Napier and Gisborne, which I was; assured was the ruleand it was gratifying to find that as we got "clear of Cook's Strait both wind and sea decreased, so that the crying of children and the nervous energy of stewardesses gradually gave way to conditions that were at once more normal and less disagreeable to those with whom a long sea voyage had made wind and set familiar things. Eighteen hours, we had been told, would find us at Napier, and if the sea should prove reasonably calm we were led to expect that we might go ashore soon after breakfast. I confess

I had hoped for better things than this conditional landing. It is true the Napier of three-and-twenty years ago had not boasted any harbour even for coasting steamers, and I had a ' respectful recollection of the difficulties we had encountered in boarding our vessel from a lighter, but I had heard of harbour works on a large scale, and as I thought on the improvements made at Timaru and Oamaru, where there, seemed really less natural protection than I could remember at Napier, I was disappointed at what appeared so poor a result. The captain kept his word, and on I corning on deck as the breakfast bell was ringing I recognised the long, low j stretch of beach ending in the abrupt group of little hills on which I knew j the residential part of Napier was built. j There was no wind, and excepting for a j long swell' the sea was almost calm, as we skirted the. long beach with its ! broad strip of low land behird it till we came abreast of the cliffs of limestone . that form a northern buttress to the i level plani, and could see the town nestI ling at their feet. There are few, if [ any, more desirable looking spots in j New Zealand ' for dwelling houses than the heights and hollows of the highlands of Napier; and a glance was enough to convince mc that they had been taken advantage of. Housessome of j them evidently of considerable pretensionscrowned the heights, while others i peered out at us in passing from bowers of trees and shrubs that seemed to fill the hollows, and wave a' sunny welcome to the sea-breeze which for the present blew softly to the beach. | And now the cliffs ended suddenly, and | the bay, where at my last visit I ha | seen the wreck of a stranded ship lying, i opened to our view. And here, close to the beetling cliff in which the highlands end, and as if taking shelter under its shadow, I caught sight of masts and a funnel lying close at hand. This, then, must be the breakwater, and the artificial harbour which I had pictured to myself farther within the bay. 1 am certainly no engineer, and. of course, had no local knowledge to guide mc. but as I looked and saw bow even in the calm-looking sea that morning the swell rose and -bbed against the low breastwork of huge blocks, 1 found the question rise in my mind whether, after all, the good people of Napier had not been a little too ambitious. If what l saw of the majestic ebb and flow of The calm water was a sample of what it was at its best, I couldn't wonder at what I saw a little farther on of huge blocks tossed to this side and that as specimens of what it could do when fairly aroused.

We rounded the end of the breakwater, and drew in to the wharf. The whole thing is on a small scale—a very small scale, indeed, it seemed to mc, when I was told of the hundreds of thousands of pounds it had —but in fine weather it affords good protection for coasting steamers when they have once succeeded • in overcoming the undertow of the tide, which makes coming alongside at Napier a work of time and a trial of patience- The whole thing, however, gives the impression of one of those dogged struggles with adverse circumstances which. are so characteristic of British colonisation in all parts of the world. It is the fight of patience and perseverance against nature's handicap, instances of which may be seen to-day on every exposed coast of every continent and island where men of our race have planted themselves and elected to make their home. The town of Napier is "unlike any of the New Zealand towns I had yet seen. It hardly claims the dignity of a city as yet, but it certainly will before a great many years are passed, and when it does so it will, I think, take rank among the most attractive of them all. Twentythree years have done a great deal for the place, though it has had no exceptional advantages to push it ahead. A realty lino-back country and an energetic people have been Napier's stock-in-trade, and with these the place has made great progress, and laid the foundations of more. Its one drawback is the want of a good harbour; if Napier had possessed that it would by this time have taken rank among the best towns in the country. As it is the town has advantages over most of those 1 had seen so far. There is ample room for a good city even now, and when the work which is now being carried on successfully, of reclaiming the flat land between the sea and the river, is finished, there will be ample room for a great city. Before that- time comes, no doubt the problem of how to make a safe and extensive harbour, available in all weathers, will have been solved, and Napier will then form the natural port of the middle district of the North Island. In this she can have only one possible rival, for many a long year at any rate, and that, as a fellow passenger was careful to tell mc, was the place we were to see next morning— Gisborne. j 1 had rather more than the average | amount of curiosity to see what Gisborne was like for several reasons, and | it did not require my companion's enthusiastic pictures of what it had be--1 come, and, still more, what it was going

to become, to make eager to see what it was like. My last visit was an old story, as I hadn't landed at Poverty Bay for 30 years. It was but a few years after the famous massacre, and even then the name of Te Kooti was a name to conjure with far, at any rate, as conjuring settlers away from the neighbourhood which he had made famous by his raid was concerned. The occasion of my last visit was historical, too, for I accompanied the official entrusted with the responsibility of selling the allotments in the newly-laid out township to the highest bidder. I can remember, in spite of the lapse of fully 30 years, that there was no great rush of bidders on the occasion, and if half my informant told mc about the present prosperity and future greatness of Gisborne should prove true, I could only regret that I had not been a bidder on the occasion myself. Two things were very clear to mc as I stood on the pier at Gisborne early oq the morning after we left Napier that my friend had been right in saying the place was flourishing; the other, that unless or until it can get some kind of decent shelter for shipping, it will never realise his sanguine estimate of its future as the chief port andjpommercial centre of the North Island after Auckland and Wellington. At present it may fairly be said there is no harbour capable of containing anything larger than a small lighter; and although the lighterage service is apparently well conducted, the fact that the bay or roadstead is almost entirely unprotected from easterly winds forbids the idea of a large city or an important commercial centre. In the meantime, however, the town, though small, is evidently flourishing, and is unusually attractive in appearance. It is the natural centre, and but fqr the wane of an available harbour would be the natural outlet of a large and very rich country even now amongst the most important in the island. It is said, too, that there are large districts rich in timber which could

easily be brought to Gisborne for shipment, but unless the difficulty of safe harbourage can be overcome, it is difficult to see how any large trade of this kind could be made profitable. At Gisborne we were evidently getting near to the genial climate of Northern New Zealand. The flowering shrubs and gorgeous climbers reminded mc at last of the New Zealand I had known best so long ago, and as I looked back at the pretty little township nestling among its roses, I felt as if I must be nearing home at last.