THE CITY OF THE PLAINS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 36, 12 September 1891, Page 362

THE CITY OF THE PLAINS.

(BY

M.H., 'N.Z. GRAPHIC.’)

/f . " I MAN nature has a strange propen- ’</ sity to pick holes In the persons and places of its acquaintance. If anybody has a failing, or any town a disadvantage, that is sure to be the fV • fl first P°* at or commentary upon the ■■■Ht name cropping up. Sydney is, perflJß. 'q ■■S haps, the great exception, that *beautiful harbour ’ being inseparably associated with the mention of its name. Even Sydney, however, gets — condemned on the score of its hot summer nights, while Melbourne is abused on account of its * brick fielders,’ London for its fogs. Wellington for its winds, Auckland for its ‘ mngginess,’ and Dunedin for its capriciousness of chilly showers. If there is a bad point anywhere it is magnified from lieing the exception into the rule, and if destiny is taking you thither, kind friends do their best to impress upon your

mind that you are going to a spot where life will speedily become unendurable. Thus, when anyone purposes taking up their residence in -Christchurch, they are at once apprised of the two facts—- * that it is awfully flat,' and * that the nor -westers are terrible.’ The imputation of flatness comes, of course, from the towns of New Zealand, such as Dunedin, Wellington, Oamaru, Nelson, Auckland, Picton, Whangarei. and others which are specially favoured in the matter of variety of situation within and about themselves. Indeed, socommon is the possession of a picturesque site all around the coast of New Zealand, that any town possessing what would be held as a very passable location in Europe or America is deemed uninteresting. Christchurch is situated upon a plain. Its position is such as that in which the founders or a potential city in the United States delight, ami its design one of the rectangular chess-board principle, followed at Salt Lake and others of the young mushroom communitiesof the Great West. Like other towns cast upon this plan, it is most commodious for movement, every thoroughfare radiating from or communicating with Cathedral Square as a centre. Thither all business ha< a tendency to converge and from that point any destination can be speedily reached. The central artery, Colombo-street. is about four miles in length, starting at the foot of the Port Hills, and running out over the Plains in the direction of the Southern Alps. The Port Hills, which rise to something like 1.200 feet, are easily accessible from the Cathedral in half an hour, and for those who are willing to test the assertion that Christchurch is not unpicturesque, a magnificent panorama of the < "anterburv Plains and its snow-capped ranges unrolls itself yonder. Travellers who know the Plain of Piedmont in

Northern Italy say that no finer vistas exist there than those which can be obtained near Christchnrch on any of the exquisitely clear days, of which there are so many between April and October, when the snow is upon the mountains. Despite its much abused summer siroccos, the climate of the Canterbury Plains is in autumn one of the most charming in the world. The rainfall is only about half that of the other provinces of New Zealand, and the rain comes deliberately preceded by premonitory symptoms there is no mistaking. Weeks, or even months of sunshine, are quite usual, and day after day often goes by displaying a sky of the softest and milkiest of blues undotted by the slightest streak of cloudland. Admitting sundry defects, there is probably no climate more calculated to develop to their utmost the best points of the English race, or to breed a handsome, athletic, and romantic people than that ot the region of which Christchurch is the coming metropolis. There is also among its population

a cohesion and a definiteness of tone and purpose more marked than in the other chief towns of Southern Britain. This was originally owing to the Episcopalian and the squattocratic elements, and thongh these are ceasing to be so prominent, the feeling of corporate pride and e-innt de corps remains, promising to make Canterbury the Virginia of New Zealand. The stamp of * Biz ’ is not obtrusive, and is never likely to become rampant over the face of society upon the Plains, as it will always be tempered by the educational, sporting, and agricultural influences which have obtained such a long start in Christchnrch during the impressionable days of its infancy. Christchurch lies athwart the courses of two winding streams, designated, respectively, the Avon and the Heathcote, which discharge themselves into the sea at less than six miles from the town. Sketches taken forty years ago show nothing but a dusty, tussock-tufted moorland with two ditches threading their way at the foot of the Port Hills towards the ocean. Now, on debouching from the tunnel leading from Port Lyttelton throngh the Port Hills, the eye of the spectator is greeted with a verdant panorama of successive fields, of coppices, of hedges and ditches, of great waving lines of poplars, and with glimpses of river scenery not unlike that of the willow - hung Thames a hundred miles above London. * Quite English, you know,’ and more English it grows as the suburb of Opawa is reached, and pretty villas peep out from between the trees over trimly-kept lawns. The only on-English points are the grand expanse of plain bounded in the distance by an interminable wall of snowy-white, and the overarching canopy of cloudless milky-blue. In these respects it is England and Italy in one. It is the river which gives < >pawa its peculiar beauty and

superiority over the other suburbs, unless it have a rival in Av onside oa the north, which is extending down the chief of the Christchurch streams. There is a tendency in the town to develop eastward into both of these faubourgs, as they lie in the way to the one side resorts of Sumner and New Brighton, six miles distant on the open shore. The suburbs which are likely to retain longest their secluded and select character are those on the opposite or southeast side of the city, Rieeartoa and Fendalton, as they are protected from the invasions of builders by intervention of the publie gardens and Hagiey Park, which, with the deviouslywinding Avon, break the continuity of Christchurch in that quarter. To the north-west, on either side of the Papanui Road, which is the continuation of the main street of Christchurch, towards the ranges, lie respectively the suburbs of Merival and St. Albans. Southward toward the Port Hills lie the less aristocratic borough of Sydenham. These seven suburbs, Opawa, Av onside, St. Albans, Merival, Fendalton, Riccarton, and Sydenham enclose the municipality of Christchurch, which extends over a complete square surface of one mile between them all. Each side of it is bounded by a belt a mile in length. On the north, the south and the east the Belt is a perfectly straight road or boulevard ; on the west it is the publie Domain, comprising Bagley Park and the Public Gardens.

From the railway station, which you enter almost immediately after passing Opawa it is but five minutes’ drive to the Cathedral. Though passing through that part where the streets are most broken and intersecting, still a visitor from the three other chief New Zealand towns cannot but be struck at the long peeps and vistas which open up on each side as he goes. Everything seems so orderly and on the rule of square. On alighting at the foot of the Godley statue—a sadly ironical tribute to the memory of the publie benefactor—the new arrival finds himself looking directly in at the Cathedral door, and with almost every building or object of urban interest around him. There is

the soft- grey Gothic of the Cathedral, the dark grey classic of the Bank of New Zealand, the dark brown domestic of the Hereford block, the red brick of the Italianesque of the Post-office, and the elegant mixed of the A.M.P. Building in its pure white Oamaru stone. Turning about from the Cathedral so as to look past the Godley statue along Woreester-street, he can see near the trees which mark the course of the Avon the red Elizabethan villa of the Town Council, and a quarter of a mile beyond that lie the scholastic piles of the University and the Museum. Behind these lie those characteristically charming ‘ lions ’of Christchurch—the river, the gardens, and the park. Walking down in that direction to the Town Conncil building, he catches his first glimpse of the Avon, a tortuous stream on which you are always unexpectedly coming, and which will meet you again further on. Just to the right here is the old Provincial Conncil House—a sort of curiosity and antiqnity in its way, now chiefly devoted to the purposes of the dance rather than of debate. In the hall of the University beyond, you have a very tmthfnl counterpart of some of tbefine English collegehallsor dining halls of tnelnns of Court. If yon pass across the pretty avenue in Antignastreet into the Museum you will see the largest collection of moa skeletons in the world, and other objects of scientific interest. Round here extends the best residential quarter within the city, chiefly villa houses with tasteful gardens, and a striking aspect of gentle ease and refinement. It is much the same on the ooposite side of the Cathedral in the direction of the East Belt, only in a rather less degree. Those who give Christchurch a reputation for monotony can have an eye for only a certain kind of beanty. To appreciate it one must see its streets towards the close of a calm summer

CHRISTCHURCH VIEWS

day, under a sky of cloudless turquoise blue. The air is so pure and clear, everything is so distinct, and over its long vistas of mingled houses and tries an exquisite peacefulness seems to be descending. To stand on such a Sunday evening where the park, the gardens, the river and Armagh-street meet, as the sun is setting and the bells are calling to prayer, is, perhaps, to enjoy the most sweetly religious picture presented by any town in the world. It is, indeed, astonishing that such various phases of natural and artificial beauty should be met in a place which has been entirely created by the hand of man within the space of a generation. It shows what an extraordinarily gifted land New Zealand is. With its glorious sky and its bountiful, though not vexatious moisture, you have only to tickle and plant its empty plain, and your city is smiling with a mature beauty ere yonr last-born has well had time to grow his whiskers. And this is but a mild earnest of the wonderful things to come, as our land develops. (liven the good taste of the Christchurch architects and gardeners, and not only the whole Canterbury Plain, but all over New Zealand our great-grandchildren will see towns and landscapes which will be miracles of beauty. When our chief cities number their quarter of a million or more, what are but small towns or hamlets, or mere names upon the map, will then be more than what Christchurch is now, and as closer cultivation and population increase, the intervening country will become but one continuous park and garden land, dotted with happy villages. But Christchurch has other pleasurable aspects. One can linger in its handsome gardens or Domain on a fresh November morning, wandering round along the willow-hung banks of the Avon, which divides them, or lying under the trees listening to the songs of countless birds. Or one can as sundown closes and the blustering nor’-wester sinks to rest in the still warmth and starry beauty of an almost Australian night, take a boat and row the one you love best up the limpid stream—courting, yes, courting—the shadows before and the sweet reality at the back of the vessel. Or as summer is on the wane, you can walk through the pleasing suburb of Fendalton, and coming back through the Park when the afternoon sun is low, note the expansive meadow-land fringed with trees in every direction, and naught indicating the presence of man but the slight grey cathedral spire rising gracefully in front. Or when at mid-autumn the leaves are in their decay, the early snows have fallen upon the distant ranges, and a balmy nor’-west breeze is taking the edge off the frosty morning air, go out into the Park and watch the glorious sunlight flashing on the leaves like gold, and gleaming white on the Alps as on mountains of powdered sugar. Or if you think Christchurch is too flat start from the Cathedral south along Colombo-street on an August morning. In half an hour you will be at the foot of the Port Hills, in another twenty minutes you will be up a thousand feet or more overlooking the Canterbury Plains. What are England or Scotland to this’ It is Piedmont over again. Beyond you is the Gulf ■of Lyttelton Harbour with its deep blue waters and the peninsula of Akaroa rolling away seawards; at your feet the noble plains with a tiny-tiny Christchurch dotted on them, an endless expanse of greenish-brown melting away north and south into indistinguishable haze, and bounding all, a giant wall of white, irregular along its crest ano bulging buttress like along its sides. Those are the Eternal Ranges sixty miles distant and thousands of feet in height. But, to be fair and give the devil his due, we must paint some reverse to the medal. One should see Christchurch in its sloppy and flatulent fits. It has a way of becoming occasionally, in winter time, characteristically English. In its best moments it is too light and bright and rectangularly beautiful to resemble anything other than itself ; but when its sky gets influenza and weeps for a month at a stretch, the damp, muddy, and bedraggled look of it is not a bad imitation of the face which our venerable mother country turns to her children with depressing frequency. Then in some summers it gets a terrible attack of the wind, which has given it an evil name. The nor’-westers will rage several times a week for months filling everything with dust, spoiling your food and soiling your clothes. It may be said, however, that they scarcely ever blowafter sundown, and the evenings which follow them are those most luxurious and suited for water parties in the whole year. A season of mildish nor’-westers is, indeed, rather desirable than otherwise, and they are yearly losing some of their virulence.

The average of height in Christchurch people of both sexes is considerable, the average of good looks is also high, and that of taste in dress noteworthy. Whether the accumulated wealth around Canterbury is great, as the number of fashionable suburbs in Christchurch would seem to indicate, it is certain there are shops in all lines on a scale out of all proportion to the size of the town. Drapers, mercers, tailors, hardware men, booksellers, photographers, and music sellers, all things in a style worthy of a place of double the size in England. The business centre is around what is known as ‘ The Triangle,’ just before you reach the Bank of New Zealand, where the five chief streets intersect, forming a natural focus for that purpose. In consequence of its flatness and convenient design it is one of the most accessible places in which a stranger can find himself for the first time. Standing here on the morning of Saturday, the market day or of a holiday, you get the concentrated life of the place passing before you—bicyclists, cricketers, boating parties, horsemen, tramcars laden with holiday-makers, for Lyttelton, Sumner, and New Brighton, and tennis enthusiasts. They are a pleasant, prosperous, happy-looking community, and take their pleasures with becoming cheerfulness. It takes about an hour to reach Sumner, seven miles away, and a quarter less to reach New Brighton. They are places of an entirely different character, the former lying directly beneath the cliffs of the Port Hills, and the latter on the bleak, open sand dunes, some six miles to the north. Sumner is not an uncommon type of watering-place, with cliffs and its beach ; but New Brighton, with its apparently interminable strand, is cast upon lines to accommodate a public equal to that of Palis or New York. The The sandy ‘ links,’ with intermittent scrub, seem to extend for miles, and when the tide is far out the sands look wide enough and long enough to gallop all the cavalry in Europe.