AS OTHERS SEE THEM

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14600, 25 February 1921, Page 7

AS OTHERS SEE THEM

a southerner in auokland. Impressions op the people. The following article by "a Davis Cup visitor" has been published in the Otagq Daily Times: — Pride of one's home town is a perfectly natural and praiseworthy sentiment until it grows sentimental. Within the limits of a decent restraint, it is a highly commendable quality, and may be regarded as a manifestation 'n a minor key of that love of home which plays so valuable a part In the keeping together and sustaining of the vyholo of our social fabric.

Hut when it degenerates into rabid and vainglorious boasting, odious comparisons, and a continual panegyric of praise, it becomes an offence and an infraction nf the eternal illness of things. Your slightly phlegmatic, but nunc the loss shrewd resident of the South, if nuked what he thinks of Dunedin, will answer guardedly, and even cautiously, llml, "Dunedin is a fine ejty, with a. good bracing cllmato," ami as likely as not he will add: "And it's a fine husiJiess town." But in (he eyes of the average Aucklander, the Queen City of the North is |he greatest place on earth. The world has never seen, and never will sec. another Auckland. It stands magnificent and alone on a majestic pinnacle of excellence, raising it far above its less favoured sisters of Wellington, Christchurch, am! Dunedin. Every one, of its citizens takes a personal pride in Auckland's greatness. For is he not part, and parcel of it'.' lie labours under a terrible conviction of its supremacy. It is an obsession with him—and an obsession from which the quality of imagination is entirely lacking:. He hurls its praises at your head and overwhelms you with a description of its immortal priories, until, your brain reeling and your sensesstunned, you see. Auckland as through a glass darkly 'not a glass of Auckland ale), and your impressions are apt. to he distorted by a not unnatural revolt against, this fiery eloquence. The Harbour and the Beaches.

Auckland Harbour, you are told, is the finest in the Southern Hemisphere. Many Aucklandcrs, in fact, have an incurable belief that il is superior in every respect to Sydney and Rio. Its wharves are all of concrete, and with the hyperbole of which he is complete master, the Aucklander glibly informs you that they must have cost millions. There is a depth of water capable of accommodating the largest traders, and, if need be, the. Grand Fleet could be stowed away so as io escape notice. Everywhere you go you will And charming little bays and beaches, where the sea, calm as a mill-pond, is bluer than anything else, and where the water : s so warm that you can remain in it all day, and night, too, if you so desire. But here let me interpolate for the comfort of oilier places which have beaches, that, go where you will in Auckland, you cannot find the long si retches of clean white sand to be round at St. Clair, Caroline Bay, and Lyall Bay, nor the great rolling breakers that impart such splendid exhilaration to the sport of surfing. Moreover, in the southern towns there is still to lie found a greater degree of homo life than appears to obtain in Auckland, with its sunny climate, its multifarious outdoor attractions, and its pleasure-loving, expensively-dressed people. Tho Legend of Rancitoto.

Some little distance down the Auek--1,11,1 harbour ig an island railed Rangitolo. To the native Aucklander it is the mosi wonderful island in the world. Standing on the deck of the ferry boat, he proudly points it oul to |he visitor, and explains: "That is Rangitolo." it. is tlie same shape from wherever you look at. it. It is of volcanic origin, and appeared during the same night that a depression caused Hie appearance of Cake Takapuna. On the top there : s a crater, and one day Auckland may he. blown tip." Everyone in Auckland knows this story, and everyone tells it to you. You may lie told it a hundred limes a day. 1 heard it so often, and always in the same form, that as soon as anyone began: "Thai is llangitoto," 1 immediately put my lingers in my ears and shouted back: "Oh, yes; I know all about, llangitoto. It looks the same from every angle, and it is of volcanic origin," etc. That is the only way to escape from the nerve-wracking and soul-devastating repetition of the famous legend of llangitoto.

Another of the lions of Auckland is a very old windmill perched on an eminence overlooking the Grafton Bridge. A thousand times and more the unwary tourist will he solemnly informed thai il is t'nn oldest landmark in Hi.' city. Then your informant adds vaguely that recently "they',' tried to secure its removal, hut nothing came of it. This windmill revolves sometimes, but very seldom; probably it is ton old. Its symbolism lies in Hie fact thai just as its huge dependent arms rotate around the tower, so, in the minds of the Aucklandcr, do the other cities of New Zealand revolve around Auckland. Planners on the Trams. No one ever escapes from Auckland without being asked whether he has seen the Ellerslie racecourse, "the musl beautiful racecourse in the Dominion." The New Zealand Insurance Company's building in Queen Street, with its "90 or '.'7(l separate 1 us, is incidentally brought under notice. Pointqd attention is drawn to "our line car service," and especially the speed of the cars down Upper Queen Street but nothing is said about the way the men scramble into the fain cars before the women and then expectorate upon the floor. That —if you are a woman— i s one of the lessons of bitter experience. If you are a man, and in your ignorance of the ethics of tram travelling in Auckland, you give a lady four scat, you are glared at savagely as Ihe author of a preposterous precedent. Women arc resented on the Aucklau I Iram cars. They arc suffered as a

necessary evil, but llic unforglveabh •sin is 1" show them any courtesy o consideration. Other things abou wliicli the Aucklander does mil s.i; very much are his theatres and hi: railway station. There is no scopi here for his eloquence as a descriptivi orator or a Cook's guide.

But despite these trifling disabilities, over which I have skimmed without though! of malice, Auckland is a place in which the joys of holiday-making may he experienced to the full. The insistency of the Aucklander upon the superlativeness of everything in Ins City merely arises from a too ardent admiration of ils undoubted beauties, and after a time one learns to suffer him gladly, if only for his boundless enthusiasm and his amusing assumption of superiority. lie is an unconscious humorist, whom it is easy to forgive unless tiis continued peans of praise interfere, with your own contemplation of the intrinsic beauties of his town.