THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1910. THE CALL OF THE HILLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14453, 20 August 1910, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1910. THE CALL OF THE HILLS.

New Zealand is a country of hills and dales and broad sweeping plains —a land in which the magic of openair life runs riot, where the waveborn winds and perpetual sun brace the body to a keen zest of the business of living. New Zealanders all love the open air and open air exercises. The reason is not far to seek. In the long procession of delightful days, year in and year out, the desire to be outside overcomes all obstacles of time and opportunity. In youth the habit is acquired, and in after life, under the compulsion of the climate, it is sustained. In some climates it is easy to believe that sports and pastimes, if they did not exist, would have to be invented to draw people out of doors. In New Zealand they are simply a necessary occupation for a people that cannot remain indoors. In the past sport has occupied almost the whole attention of New Zealanders, as a means of enjoying their opportunities, for open-air life, and it must, both here in Auckland and elsewhere, always form the chief means for the bulk of the people. As the Dominion advances in maturity, however, and the opportunities for travel by road and rail are developed and cheapened, the scenic beauties of the delightful islands in which we have made our home will offer countless attractions. At present what may be conveniently termed the holiday districts in New Zealand are limited almost exclusively to a few places in which thermal activity is found. There are no popular watering places where the chief occupation of the permanent residents is the catering for the pleasure and enjoyment of occasional visitors. Blackpool and Margate, Brighton, Scarborough, and Llandudno have hitherto found no imitators in New Zealand, because, no doubt, the hour has not yet arrived. Congested towns, busy hives of industry, where space is confined, where the hum and bustle of twentieth century competitive commerce holds exclusive and undisputed sway, and where the beauty of nature has been obliterated —these are the places which create the need of the handy pleasure resort where the jaded worker may sojourn and recoup his exhausted forces. And as in New Zealand we are as yet without the one, the need has not arisen for the other.

In connection with the question of holiday resorts it is curious to note how the call of the hills has touched the, heart of the later generations of men. The modern man feels that in the hills away from human habitation and the stress of life he is in closer touch with his own real self. That which brings to him a precious sense of rcstfulness and an inexpressible admiration for the grandeur of creation was to his grandfathers but a dreary and an ugly waste. Admirers of Dr. Johnson will remember his comment on the Scottish Highlands, after his tour of a district which has since become classic for its noble grandeur. " This uniformity of barrenness," he said, "can afford very little amusement for the traveller." O r the same region Goldsmith, a keen observer of landscape beauties, complained

that " hills and rocks intercept every prospect." Bishop Berkeley, as he tells us himself, " was put out of humour by the most horrible precipices," when he crossed the Cenis, and Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, saw in the Alps and Apennines merely " undigested heaps of stone,'' which, he says, ■ " have neither form nor beauty, neither shape nor order, no more than the clouds in the air.' In similar mood we find Richardson in "Sir Charles Grandison" remarking of Lans-le-bourg that " every objcct which presents itself is excessively miserable." Chateaubriand coidd see nothing agreeable in the hills, but he found some excuse for their existence in that they were " the sources of rivers, the last asylum of liberty in an age of slavery, and a barrier against the horrors of war."

What a contrast to all this we have in the modern view. In Burns, in Scott, and in the English " Lake poets" and all later writers we see the new note struck. Scott's poems abound in references to his native hills, showing unmistakably what his opinion was, and Wordsworth was but speaking the view of his contemporaries when he wrote :—

. . . Therefore am I stilt A lover of the meadows and the woods Anfl mountains; . . . Since Wordsworth's days Switzerland, the mountain centre of Europe, has become the world's holiday ground, and people of leisure in all countries speak of its peaks and passes, its crags and glaciers, as of familiar friends. The note has changed completely, and one cannot help the conviction that it has changed for the better. It is surely better that a human being' standing in the clouds with the world spread out below his feet should experience a feeling of exhilaration and exuberant health, rather than a sense of fear and horror. The hills to the jaded city worker suggest peace and calm reflection, and all that nature can offer furthest removed from his daily grind of " getting and spending." In Johnson's days the world was still young and spacious, and fresh air was shut out from nowhere. As it fills the open, uncrowdable spaces acquire a new value, and the charm of stillness and distance appeals in a degree formerly undreamt of.