OUR HOMELAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20496, 22 February 1930, Page 4 (Supplement)

OUR HOMELAND.

BT EI/SIB K. MORTON.

LOVELY AKAROA

MEMORIES OF OTHER DAYS

Nothing had Pixio and Pat enjoyed more in all their long voyaging than their exploration of Akaroa. The beauty of the little town, its atmosphere of romance and old-world charm captured their imagination, and seemed to transport them to some little hamlet of that Old World which ■ they had never seen. The vory names of the streets, Balgueri, Lavaud, and Jolie, held a fascination all their own, and the quaint, old-fashioned houses with their gables and tiny attic windows were like pictures in some treasured story-book of childhood. Tho main road ran along the waterfront, tho English and French portions of the town stretching across the rim of two shallow crescent bays. Many little lanes and by-ways ran back fom tl'<> main street, and Pixie and Pat rambled up and down these leafy, narrow paths, past beautiful, old gardens where great walnut and cherry trees spread their branches over tho fences, so that their fruit dropped freely iuto the road outside. in the gardens were tangling rose-vines, honeysuckle, sweet syringa, and old-fashioned flowers that had bloomed from seeds and slips brought out from La Belle Franco by pioneer settlers nearly a century ago. Up winding paths the twins climbed to wooded valleys in the hillsides, stili farther tip to the wind-swept heights beneath great Brazenose and Purple Peak, with <i glorious panorama of groves and gardens, farm lands, cosy homes and glitter ing blue waters opening out beneath. They followed a mountain path far across tho heights above the harbour arid eight miles out to tho sea, where a tall lighthouse flashed its sentinel light from a cliff-top nearly 300 ft. above the surging sea. Up tho winding stairway of the lighthouso they climbed to tho lantern, and saw glittering prisms and lenses that sent a shaft of "guiding light over the blackness of storm and roaring billow. Another trip Pixie and Pat took was to Memorial Point, where they saw the Column erected on tho spot where Captain Stanley hoisted the British flag on that memorable day long ago, when the French ships with their emigrant settlers were still three days' voyage from the Now Zealand coast. Up and down tho blue harbour cruised the Silver P[ane, one trip taking tho voyagers over Onawe, a little peninsula at tho head of tho harbour, once the scene of a frightful Maori massacre, now tho site of peaceful farm lands. Out beyond tho stark cliffs of tho Heads flow Pixio and Pat, peering into grim, dark caverns where tho ocean rollers broke with thunderous roar, watching tho sleek porpoises lolling and playing out in the open sea. And in tho evening, when tho red light of sunset lay on Purple Peak and the towering hills behind the little town, and the bell-birds chimed in tho ngaio trees on tho waterfront, tho children decided that in all their travels they had seen no moro enchanting spot than Akaroa.