MOONLIT WAITEMATA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18689, 21 April 1924, Page 5

MOONLIT WAITEMATA.

AN ENCHANTING SCENE. WONDERFUL EASTER NIGHTS .SENTINEL HARBOUR LIGHTS The Waitemata is beautiful in its every mood. Its name suggests that the. Maori found it most beautiful when there was a little movement on the surface of its -waters and the sun made every ripple and wavelet a helio. This is the scene most frequently presented during the long summer days, and it is the one most readily recalled by the AuckJander abroad. Sparkling waters under a sky of the deepest blue make a picture that is altogether alluring when one is in a London fog, or in the heart of a frost-bound continent.

But there are other wonderful moods of the Waitemata that are quite distinct but of amazing beauty. When a haze of filmy heliotrope hangs above a perfectly calm harbour at dawn, and ships at their moorings are so soft in outline, but so magnified that they seem to be dream ships— then there is a scene to lift one to heights of ecstasy. And when tho long, flat rays of the setting sim make a riot of colour down the reaches there is a seascape that surely belongs to the colourful East. But what mood of the Waitemata is more enchanting, more heart-filling, than that of the last few nights, when a full moon has risen to shine the night long upon a Waitemata that has not had a ripple beyond the long,, widening wakes of boats? Holiday visitors havß been offered nothing finer than the harbour scene of Friday and Saturday nights. . Dancing in the summer sun the Waitemata is the laughing maid on pleasure bent, care-free and wilful, living for the moment, the embodiment of mirth. But her beauty of the Easter nights, when even the faintest zephyr has beern withheld so that she might not be disturbed, has been that of the woman of spiritual radiance, so exalted as to bo hardly of this world.

On such nights th© voice of the city has been a harsh discord, and those who would feel in full measure the mystery of the scene must go to some lonely bay or promontory, where the only sound is the whispering of tho waters 'of the ebbing tide over the reefs, or thei lar> of the wavelets upon a sandy strand- These aro the nuiet voices of Nature that never make discord—they are rttune/'l to the infinite. But it is difficult to escape from manmade sounds, and ever* some of them lose some of their harshnee®. On Friday evening, when the bells called the people to worship arid reminded a citv on pleasure bent of thf\ religions significance of the festival, the. clang was softened Under the influence, of the nijrht, not to mention distance, some of the bells seemed to find a silver v tone. They recalled the Last Post" played on trumpets rather than the reveille from brazen-throated bugles.

As many a Tjlew Zealander knows, the moonlit desert makes insistent appeal to the emotions. It sets rip an almost painful yeaniing tto travel into the waste. But they know that the moonlit desert is the same cruel desert, and that the call of the night is as -false as the beckoning of the imaginary waters of the day. There is nothing false or cruel about the appeal of such nights on the Waitemata. Thvy make occasion for a little wilfulness — wistfulness is sometimes akin to —but to forestall melancholy which is a wicked thing, the sentinel harbour lights keep constant vigil and seem to signal "All's well."