Picturesqueness and Dirt.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIX, Issue VIII, 23 August 1902, Page 462

Picturesqueness and Dirt.

What is at the bottom of the analogy between picturesqueness and dirt? Auckland is unquestionably the most beautifully situated of New Zealand cities, and if we believe in Dr. Makgill’s health report she must as certainly be the dirtiest and, therefore, the most unhealthy. Now, what is the reason of this? It seems strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that the most beautiful cities of the world are almost without exception the filthiest. Take Naples, for example. “See Naples and die,” was for years

a dictum conveying gracefully the opinion that you could in all the world and in all your travels see nothing more lovely. But of late years “See Naples and die” has borne the more sinister meaning that to see Naples you had to run such risks of typhoid and other filth diseases that if you remained to see you were indeed likely to die. Rio is, as far as personal experience goes, the most lovely and the most gorgeous place in the world. And for stenches, incredible filth, and fever it is also extremely hard to beat. Go to Italy, The villages, the townships and the ancient cities are marvels of beauty, and in point of smells they each seem more ambitious than the other. It is, I am told, the same with Damascus, which from the distance looks a city of gardens, but which when you enter it reminds of a famous but unmentionable t<» ears polite, circle in Dante’s “Inferno.” Now, what is the bearing of the one on the other? Are the residents of beautiful places so wrapped up in admiration of the beauties that surround them that they cannot spare time to be clean, and gradually become oblivious of olefactory offences at every hand? Or does part of the beauty belong to dirt, and would be. destroped if it were destroyed? Auckland is a city of gullies, and quaint wooden buildings make these gullies picturesque. If they were destroyed would the gullies become commonplace and the city lose part of its beauty? It must be confessed clean—< perfectly clean—cities, are rarely beautiful. Take, for instance, Adelaide, which always looks as if it had come out of a bandbox, it is about as uninteresting and ordinary looking a large city as you would see in the wide world. But I fear, even if dirt and beauty are wedded, Auckland will have to suffer a divorce and part with the insanitary conditions to which she has clung so long and so fondly. The authorities are, as the doctor says, incredibly ignorant of what is required, but the people are now awake at last,- they know what they want, and they are determined to have it. Good drainage, and good pure water is now the universal cry, and the old, insane idea of risking death and disease rather than add a penny to the rates is dead. Det us hope for Auckland’s . sake it may never be resurrected.