AUCKLAND AND THE NORTH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 5997, 5 February 1881, Page 6

AUCKLAND AND THE NORTH.

The travc' , Tiniw ' correspondent of the Lyttclton the following on the city of Auck. ind and the Northern districts :—Of all the cities of New Zealand, Auckland strikes the new arrival on the East Coast, as the most picturesque, and altogether the finest. A noble street runs up from the wharf, and the suburbs, which you approach are very beautiful. The Auckland municipality has done Veil and wisely in planting the suburban Hreets.'with: trees , , .after the fashion of the ; Paris boulevards. In a few years their welcame shade will make the suburbs of Auckland the most pleasant and beautiful streets in the world. Of course Auckland had a good start; as the capital of the colony, as the capital of tne province, as the place which was for a long time the. headquarters of the troops. An immense amount of money has been spent in Auckland, and no doubt the Auuklundcrs have retained a fair share of it. Add to tin's the natural advantages of the site—the double harbour, by which it lias access to both coasts, its situation in reference to Polynesia, and it is easy to account for its present thriving and prosperous condition, and we may safely prophesy for it a career of steady and, perhaps, rapid iniprovment. But if we go North of Auckland, into the country. districts some distance beyond the immediate influence of the city, up into the for North, to those regions known on recent maps as the counties of Hokianga, Bay of Islands, and Mongonui, what a change we see ! No well built towns with wide paved streets, gas, elegant shops, fine public buildings, spacious wharves, .and all the other appliances of modern civiliz .tion, nothing that ; betokens progress. You will find a part of j the colony which was inhabited by Europeans ' long before Canterbury or Otago were founded i with aclimateunsurpassedinthe world, with j safe and spacious harbours, abundant means of water carriage, and in spite of these ad van- I tages, the most backward and neglected part j of the colony I have yet seen. The great' main North road is merely a track cut in the J fern and tea-tree scrub, running over hill and I valley, not metalled, and only comparable to a road in Turkey or Asia Minor. You find vast tracts of land, which would if cultivated supply all Australasia with wine, covered with scrub, and not producing the value of a farthing per acre per annum. You find in a climate like that of Southern Italy that fruit has to be imported from Sydne3' and is both scarce and dear; and that the ordinary garden vegetables, most of which will grow all the year round, are hardly to bo bought at any price, and none except the commonest can be bought at all. In my next I hope to be able to elucidate in some measure the causes of this very deplorable state of things.