HOMEWARD BOUND.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15902, 13 April 1912, Page 16

HOMEWARD BOUND.

THE GREAT SOUTHERN ROUTE. ACROSS THE PACIFIC. (I.) Few contrasts of the new and the old can well be more impressive than that of the present with the past in the matter of facilities for travel that are offered to the New Zealand public. It is not necessary to go back to the distant past of fifty or sixty years ago, when the New Zealand or Australian settler who wished to find his way to Britain had to reckon with a four months’ voyage, during which tho various aspects of sea and sky formed the only scenery to which he was likely to be introduced. Twenty years ago the choice lay practically between the Red Sea and the Californian routes, the latter being but little used except by those whose destination was America rather than the Mother Country. Today the choice is not only varied but attractive. The sea voyage either to Britain by way of the Horn or to New Zealand by way of the Cape is no longer well described as “ long,” while instead of a monotonous ocean voyage it has become rather a succession of short voyages from country to country, that are both a pleasure and an education to travellers, old and young. The addition of tho Canadian route via Vancouver has of late years supplied another, and what has proved to be a very favourite, route to and from Britain. It is one, too, that for its soenic effects cannot easily be surpassed. Tiie failure of the old San Francisco line of mail steamers has probably had much to do with the greater popularity of the northern route across the American continent, while the sentimental feeling in favour of seeing something of the great North American fragment of the British Empire rather than of a country that is at least technically foreign, has led many colonial travellers to avoid the more southern, and in many' respects the more widely interesting, route by way' of California, both in going and coming. Tliis, it can hardly be doubted, is a mistake. The Canadian route, in spite of its many attractions, both of scenery and sentiment, is not only less varied hut very much less interesting to the average traveller than tho route which passes through a country already the scene of an amazing development, the result of human effort.

It is unfortunate that the great southern route from New Zealand on one sido of the globe to Britain on the other, should not in the first stages bo so well provided for as that by way of Canada, as this not unnaturally prejudices a good many people against it. There is no denying that the steamers now performing tho service between Wellington and San Francisco are, compared with those on tho Vancouver route, very inferior in accommodation, as well as slower in speed. They are, in point of fact, a little out of date. Twenty years ago, or even less than that, they might have been considered satisfactory, , but to-day, in comparison with other lines, the accommodations they have to offor are poor. Tho now route to San Francisco may he said to be the cross Pacific route. Tho Vancouver route, while it has also to cross tho Pacifio, Sees so almost insensiblv on its long northerly course. The Canadian steamers seem quickly to get a wav from the waters of the South Pacific and with the exception of the gl’impse at the Fiji group their passengers see nothing of tho South Sea Islands, which ought to navo a special interest for New Zowlanders. * The southern route is one that is undoubtedly to become better

known and more fully appreciated when the completion ol the Panama Canal opens it as tlio favourite track for a large part of the shipping that trades between Europe and Australasia, as that which most fully lives up to the namo of Pacific. It is, in fact, the peaceful ocean of the globe, ana the new rout©, which. eastward as far as Tahiti before turning nortbr waji-d, obtains tho full benefit of it* usual calm.

Both Rarotonga and' Tahiti are to* appearance excellent representative# of the South Sea Islands. Both are. “ipomt of fact, mountain tops, th* lofty peaks of tho great mountain °“ ain the submerged continent of the Central Pacific. Rarotonga, indeod, is hardly more than such a peak, rising with a mere fringe of coral beach to abrupt and rugged hills that would look forbidding but for th* splendid covering of tropical vegetation, from which the waving plumes of the palm-trees stand out at every o ike nearly all others of the South Sea Islands, Rarotonga has no harbour unless a little bay, partly protected by the jutting coral reef, can be dignified by tho title. With the wmd blowing at all freshly from the south-east, the usual direction of the trade winds in that latitude—it is no easy problem that i* presented to tho people who load and unload the cargo, as well as to the more adventurous passengers, who are willing to risk a wetting for the satisfaction of having set foot for the first tame on tho shore of. a tropical island. There can be no doubt of the wild and singular beauty of the scene; the que®taon, however, that naturally arises is how. any considerable population can subsist on. a small island, consisting almost entirely of mountains, rising to a height of about three thousand feet. Tho slopes are never very gentle, and the narrow valleys are little better than fairly wide gullies that form the bed» of the streams flowing from the hills. Tho answer is to bo found in the wonderful productiveness of the land, owing partly to its rich volcanic character, and still more to its tropical climate. With these advantages both Rarotonga and Tahiti can, and do support a largo population, considering their extent, of well-fed and vigorous-looking men, and there can be little doubt that in both cases much more, both of fruits and of valuable root crops of various kinds, could bo raised. Tahiti, a little more both to the north and east than Rarotonga, ha* long had tho interest which attaches to the first experiment in French pos- ' session, if not colonisation, in the south Pacific. Like Rarotonga, it has also the advantage of being a very beautiful specimen of the tropical island of the Pacifio. Mountainous, like all the other islands that are not 'merely atolls In these seas, it gives the impression of having room for a good deal more land fit for cultivation than Rarotonga, though its general features are th« eamo. It has, besides, a better and &. good deal safer harbour than any to be found in the Cook group, and which has also the great advantage of facing the north, or a little west of north, and so is entirely protected by the high lands of the island from the prevailing trade wind. In itself it can hardly he called a good harbour, nor is it a large •one, but as an anchorage ground for a small French man-of-war, and a port that can supply wharf and [ harbour facilities for two or three trading steamers of the size at present em* ployed in these waters, it is enough id capacity and sufficiently safe. ' A casual glance at the place _and people is enough to mark the radical difference' between the French, ideas and those of our own people in th« treatment of native races.. . It is npfc merely the presence of a military force} there is, in addition, something in the atmosphere which aoeaks of coercion. In Tahiti, indeed, it has become so completely the recognised condition that anything else would probably seem urn* natural even to the natives, and yet v> forces on the observer a sense of how much cause the Maori people have for thankfulness that they wqro spared the fate that so nearly beM them, of falling into French hands not quite threequarters of a century ago. The lost view of Tahiti, with Its little town, embowered in tropioal. foliage of a hundred varieties and fringed with tall palm trees that wave a farewell, is the last view of tropical land on the southern course. From that point tho route turns northward and tho degrees of latitude are covered rapidly. First there is the gradual dying away of tho southern trades, a# you near the equator; then the wind swings to the westward, and. its increasing strength is felt ,as the steamer runs northward, drawing closer day by day to the jutting coast of the North American continent. Six days from Tahiti • brings oven such moderately rapid steamers as those at present employed on our southern moil service to the northern edge of the tropic zone, and to the beginning or the trade routes of the American coast. Here and there a white sail looms up on the eastern horizon, or a faint curl of smoke draws an interested crowd to the bulwark or the rigging. The feeling is in the air that we are once more in the track of commerce. A day or two more and the signs of life and human activity have grown more plentiful still; and at last the weloome new* goes round that land is sighted, and everybody orowds-to gaze and to speculate on tho question where that bold coast on the right hand will be broken through by the famous entrance of the Golden Gate.

Generally the voyagers have not long to wait, as the coast is nearly always sighted within a few miles of tho en* trance. First the lighthouse on its island rock a few miles from the coast, and next the arrival of a hurrying little pilot boat, flying tho American flag, communicates to everybody the exciting news that in another hour and a half they may expect to see the resurrected city of.western America.