LOVELY AUCKLAND.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 339, 6 June 1885, Page 3

LOVELY AUCKLAND.

By Voice-Hawkins.

Sunday morning last broke clear and quiet. The succession of rainy depressing days gives place to quiescent Nature, and the landscape is again lit up under the bright influence, of the morning sun. Our Southern Boreas and Jupiter Pluvius have worn each other out — the one has blown himself out of breath, and the other has emptied all his available waterpots. I got outside the enclosure where the Eussian trophy guns are placed just in time to meet the keeper unlocking the gates, reaching the flagstaff as the sun rose. How clear and bright the atmosphere ! how quiet the sleepy city ! and all Nature is in unison. There's neither smoke nor haze to dim the delightful prospect, each house of the town and each landmark around, each spar on the vessels, and each boat on the water is as plain to the vision as if but a yard away. Majestic Eangitoto cuts the sky with his jagged peaks, a" bank of fleecy cumuli is brilliant under the blaze of ascending Sol, and the wavelets sparkle as they merrily dance to the music of enlightening day. The scene is enchanting in its loveliness, and yet there's a better vantage spot than this from which to drink in these beauties. To walk a few miles with such an object in view is but a labour of love. Very few Aucklanders are I about — mostly everybody is snug under the ! blankets, for the air is cold and frost lies on the ground. These sleepy people are possibly so used to the beautiful scenes around this modern and Antipodean Byzantium that they now pass by her charms unnoticed. ' A prophet has no honor in his own country,' and beauty is made manifest only by comparison. Goldfinches chirrup to each other among the young , pines as I climb the steep sides of Mount Eden, and numberless winged creatures fill the air with their harmonious salutations to the daughter of the dawn. The journey to the summit is full of interest. There are everywhere rifle pits of the old pah. Yonder a clump of trees hide, yet mark, the place where numbers of brave red coats fell during the war with the warrior native race. I look in wonder at that strange depression — an extinct crater of ages past, which will not hold the water the heavens pour into it. And now the top is reached. The wind blows cold, though at the foot, and on the way up, I did not notice any breeze at all. The panorama, whichever way you may choose to look, is delightful to dwell upon. ' Words cannot picture a scene so fair.' I am spellbound. Such loveliness 'beggars' all description. The vista is so grandly beautiful— it is such a combination of the picturesque and magnificent that it lies beyond my humble powers of expression to faithfully depict. There's a slight haze on the -eastesn horizon, under the sun, but otherwise, and elsewhere around, the air is wonderfully bright and clear. It has been my good fortune during years of travel to view many charming landscapes. I have climbed Mount Wellington's rocky sides, in Tasmania, and toiled up Mount Remarkable when the wheat was green and yellow on the

vast plains of South Australia, and have feasted my eyes on many more of Nature's* lovely works in sunny Australia, but never before have my eyes met so much of beauty to feed on from one siagle standpoint. There is no limit to the vision between the eye and the horizon. Hundreds of square miles of all shades of green country, and of the blue restless ocean waves meet your gaze as you simply turn yourself around. Islets, mountains, rivers and inland seas are nil presented to you in one great natural picture. I look in bewildering amazement at the vast comprehensiveness of this panorama. To the west is the ocean, to the east still the .Pacific lies. ■ Yonder, westward, can be seen the locality where the Orpheus took into the watery depths her brave crew of British sailors, and by a slight motion of the head your sight dwells on the Great Barrier away to the northward. Nearer at your feet is the citj, with its beautiful suburbs, immediately below and all around the base of the mount. The blue of the air and the ocean, the green of the fields, everywhere set off by the white homesteads, mansions and dwelling houses, the spires of the churches, the harbour and its shipping, the white sails of the boats flecking its azure bosom, the calm broad expanse of water backed by the bold headlands on the opposite shores — form a picture an artist could not paint, be he ever so gifted, and which our language is totally inadequate to give full expression to.