BEAUTY AND BUSINESS

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14819, 24 October 1911, Page 8

BEAUTY AND BUSINESS

1 ATTRACTIONS OF AUCKLAND^ THE GATEWAY OP GLITTERING WATERS. * \ ■ I In- an article on "New Zealand, ft. - \ penal," in the Empire Magazine M - % Arthur J. Rees pictures the beauties of *, Auckland, under the heading. " The Gate. way of Glittering Waters," M follows*- ■ \ We hear a lot about city-planning ": " H these days. We are beginning to ts&l : that if man makes the towns it is his du* to build them as beautiful as bricks and mortar will permit, and not sacrifice health and light and space and beauty to a aor. did inflation of city lot values. I n New' *' Zealand nature has done the preliminary 1 and the larger share—of the city-phu^" fj for man by providing him with ideal roomy - : ; sites. Those used to the crowded streets" I and stifling confined spaces of the bis " centres of the older worid would be as. I tounded at the elbow room and light and \ air of a New Zealand citv. The™ -~„ " 1 i it, lo are . I no slums; gardens abound beauty o ta' £ that nature made and man has preserved jlfifl are all round the city dweller, f n f : conditions human life is capable of its highest realisation and development. The - Auckland city man has a hundred beauty I spots within half an hour's reach of hia office door the city is a beauty spot itself. S If he has a taste for solitude he can climb to the top of Mount Eden, and from it extinct crater look down on the city spread out beneath him. Or he can take a ferry boat from the harbour and reach the hilly country of the North Shore in a few minutes. A drive of two or three - miles over the same hills will bring him to a circular lake of mysterious volcanic origin, fringed with willows and edged by water lilies, separated only by a nar- '< row strip of beach from the ocean waters of the Hauraki Gulf.

Point Resolution. ! : - They have so many beauty places in an j around Auckland, that many of the quiete- - ones are neglected and unknown. Then is Point Resolution, for instance, within a few hundred yards of the centre of thj city, unvisited by the majority of Aucklanders, and unmentioned even by- tha übiquitous guide book. Yet it is a lovely spot, and an historical one to boot, la ■" 1886 New Zealand suffered so badly from . - ; i the Russian scare that the Government built a fort there. The Russians did not come, and the fort would not have stopped « them if they had, for it was valueless, from a strategical point of view. The* grim bastion from which the black muzzles of the great guns protruded menacingly, is now overgrown with grass as though nature resented nun's warlike intrusion on her peaceful domain, and hastened to wipe out every trace. Lichen is spreading over ' the gray stone ramparts, fragrant red and white clover cover the raised platforms, and delicate fern fronds spread out of the | loopholes. From the top of this deserted battlement, what a . scene of beauty unfolds itself ! The blue waters of the harbour stretch away to a blue sky line 1I a . I eastern entrance to the harbour &nd the 1 Great Barrier Island are faintly outlined against the- horizon; North Head and Rangitoto mark the way in. To the " j west the waterfront of the city can be seen, and the ships at anchor. . The plateau on which the fort is' built ? tapers to a wooded point jutting out into I the water at a considerable height and when you are tired of gazing across the sea and its islands, you will probably become fascinated by the wonderful way in which the passing of the smallest, flic-;:- . est cloud over the sun is "reflected in rippling, running, shadows in the deep bine mirror directly beneath . you, until, r the longer shadows cast by the setting sun turning the blue into purple and then to - black, warn you that it is timo to ga, i home, l( . ;.,., n . -~..- 4 Waitemata Harbour. The harbour itself se;ms to dominate Auckland. You see it from all parts of the city, sometimes snrtad out in all its glittering beauty as i?sr as the eye can reach, or just a part of it peeping up at you shyly, faultless i .-:. i flower, as you turn the comer of a city- street. Audits waters are generally cafe, and unruffled and blue— reflection of lb blue eky above. If you have ever bwn in Auckland you always think afteiwa; :Is. when far away, of the blue of its jiarborr when Auckland is mentioned. Some d;y you hope to go back, and look at it agan from that high sunny park in the centre of the city. The Maoris, with that joetio appreciatiefi ' of natural beauty which ht ; ever characterised them, named this harbour Wai-te--mata, which means " glittering waters." It is a pity that the white men who came afterwards had not a similar vein of poetry in their composition, for then they would not have disfigured some of the most romantic spots in the harbour, with such r ' names as Brown's Island, Drunken Bay, and Castor Oil Bay. .

They take life easy in Auckland. There is something so still and restful about the blue waters and green gulfs of this gracious garden of the North that the mind recoils from the mere idea of bust' e. There is a semi-Bohemian flavour abojt life in Auckland that .grows on you no other New Zealand citv has anything precisely like it. '.■•■■"''• ■"'."', .";-; : R;«IS> A Fine Business City. But Auckland is a fine business city for all that,,' and has carried out large commercial, municipal, and port enter-, prises. * The new erro-conerete piers just constructed include one of the largest—if not the —ferro-concrete piers in the world for deep-sea ehips. Auckland; is leading the way up the New Zealand population ladder, and has., . i just climbed another rung. Recent returns give Auckland and its suburbs a ; population of • 110,000. which is 20,000 • ahead of Wellington, the capital, and an increase of 22,000 in five years. Auckland newspapers find in this rapid increase a cause for intense congratulation, and they are already, computing when the city shall reach a-quarter of a million. They estimate that a-quarter of a century will bring this about, which seems reasonable on the recent phenomenal rate of increase. .And Auckland would be able to expand to double that dimension without materially . encroaching on her wide spaces and elben room., "'-'•"