AN OTAGO GIRL IN ENGLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 2985, 31 May 1911, Page 72

AN OTAGO GIRL IN ENGLAND

An Otago girl who is enjoying her prolonged stay in England writes me such interesting letters that I think my readers will enjoy hearing some extracts from thiem. Though this is her second English spring—the first one- was ■ spent in London, —and though the flower ' pageant of the glorious parks, with their , wealth of deciduous trees and spring flowers, was a beautiful experience, it 's rural spring which travellers from the Antipodes long to realise Browning's lines in actual experience: Oh to be in England row that April's there. And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwoodi sheaf Round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf, "While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now I And a.tter April, when May follows, And the white throat builds, and all the I swallows! I It was an early spring which followed the hard, long winter in England this year, and on March 16 my girl friend writes from Torquay r—" There are masses of the large, long-stalked violets here already. Really, the flowers are almost | as large as violas, and you oan buy more ' than you oan hold in one hand for twopence'! It is true that the flowers in ! Devon .are simply wonderful. One of our , pleas ant est excursions from here was by I train to Kingswear and over the harbour | —five minutes by terry—to Dartmouth. It was a lovely sunny morning, and the line wound round pretty little bays, with 'millions of seagulls hovering about the beach and cliffs.' The banks and cuttings were covered in places with lovely primroses in full bloom, and beyond lay the ; red ploughed fields. I told you how ' picturesque the warm Ted earth is in this I part of England. So far we have not experienced the crowning joy of gathering the primroses ourselves, for all those near at hand are picked by children, who sell them to the shops ; it is only far away 1 you see them in quantities. ! "In the fields just now you notice ; dozens of heaps of red earth which I find are made by the moles, which are in ! numbers at this time of year, and busy j making new runs. As we ran into Kings- ' wear we saw the training ships Britannia j and Hindoostan in the river; high, topheavy things they looked. Both harbour and 'river are just-the beautiful green--1 blue of our inland lakes; and through the ba-e boughs of the great leafless trees tne | rocks and cliffs showed so clearly.- . . . I "A few days after we went to Buxnarn, 'and found no difficulty in (believing it to be the oldest ftehin* village in England. Just as in Teneriffe, the houses are i jambed one on top of another, and when ' a cart passes you squeeze yourself tor I safetv against a wall. Doors and floors I are all below the level of the street, and the rooms so tiny; yet the women and children are healthy, happy- coking creatures, probably living out of doors most of the time. On the spot where William of Orange landed us h:s statue with its , inscription. ' The liberties and Protestant I religion of the English people I will main- | "The proud descendants of the sturdy l little fisherman who carried William the ! few steps from the beat to the stone landi ine still live here, and carry on their forebeans' calling—only there are no kings | to be carried ashore in these commonI place days! Near by we saw an ugly, horrid-looking bouse, called le Okie I Coffin House.' It is exactly the shape of 1 a coffin, and painted black and claims to be the 'only one in England. I hope j visit to Plymouth proved, intensely ! interesting, and from a long letter of j many pages I make a few extracts, as i fellows : , ~ "First we made our way to the very oldest part of Plymouth, where the ! grandees used to live and where pro--1 bably Drake was often entertained. i ' Sutton's Pool,' too, is interesting—« I husse area filled with fishing boats, small I steamers, trawlers launches etc., and ! penetrated everywhere with the odour of j fish On the quay, when the boats come I in in the earlv morning, the fish market j is held. This used to be the port to Old ' Plymouth, and from this ' pool ' Drake sailed to fight and beat the Spanish Armada. Here, too, blown in bad weather, the Mayflower started again for Massachusetts Bay. She was only 180 tons, that historic ship; and the old,

rough stone with ' Mayflower, 1620,' on it, let into the pavement, is all that remains of the old pier. . . . " ' The Hoe,' a long, broad stretch of grass beautifully kept, with asphalt paths at intervals and long slopes planted with trees, faces the sea. Here is the memorial of the victory over the Spanish Armada, and further along a fine statue of Drake, with bared head thrown proudly back, and a world at his feet. "The seats have shelters round them, bo that it does not matter how strong the wind is ; so here we sat in comfort and watched the harbour, which is very beautiful, with the rivers running into it, and the fine Edgecumbe Estate on a bold, projecting bluff. . . . This morning early we went by train to Devonport to see the dockyards." I cannot attempt to describe therm We walked miles and miles and miles, seeing warships being built, etc., though we were sorry there was no Dreadnought being constructed here. Near at hand in the harbour was a first-class battleship, with her four attendant submarines. All you could see of the latter was the four little flags flying from the stern, which marked their position. The men sleep and live on board the battleship, accompanying the home fleet, wherever it goes, in their submarines for work, but sleep on beard. Rope manufacture, with the thread of -thin red Government twine through every piece of rope, was most interesting. A man, .to show me, cut a piece of metal over a ton in weight on a blade which slices up this metal just as easily as we would cut parsley with a knife!" But it is on the drive to Bideford that my correspondent came face to face with the. English country springtime. "We drove through three miles of most beautiful woods. The road is very steep, and curves as abruptly as a mountain road in Central Ota go. and you look down cliffs to the sea, which is lovely, seen through the leafless branches of the trees, and beneath there is a. carpet of brown bracken. . . . We drove through lanes

•which were mass of primroses. Never have I anything like the beauty of these ; clumps, growing perhaps in a sandy ow, or at the foot of banks, and almo: t ■.n the road itself. The driver stopped, so that we might pick some. The beauty and the delicate scent of the masses of flowers was something I snail never forget! There is a little white oxalis, and a small yellow everlasting daisy—just like our white one in New Zealand —growing wild on the banks. . . . We saw fields and fields of wild daffodils as wo drove along, literally ' dancing' in the light air. . . . And to-day it is snowing!"