THE NAPIER CARNIVAL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 12, 21 March 1908, Page 19

THE NAPIER CARNIVAL.

TEN DAYS’ FESTIVITIES AT THE BRIGHTON OF NEW ZEALAND.

Napier inaugurated its ten days' carnival on Monday-under conditions of a promising nature. The town was crowded with visitors from far and near, every hotel and boardinghouse being crowded. The weather, though chilly, was fine. All the main streets were gaily decked with bunting, mostly sent by the Government from Wellington, and a holiday feeling pervaded the place. The official opening took place on the Marine Parade rotunda, where brief addresses were delivered by the Hon. J. A. Millar, Minister for Labour, the Mayor (Mr. J. Vigor Brown) and others. Subsequently a huge Maori demonstration was held on the recreation ground, and a bowling tournament, in which fifteen rinks are engaged, was commenced. The latter will run three days, and will be followed by pairs matches. Races were held on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the lawn tennis championships are fixed for Thursday and Friday. On Friday there will also be the Napier Sailing Club regatta, and a grand motor gymkhana. The New Zealand Amateur Association will hold championships and handicap events at Westshore on Thursday and Monday, and on Saturday there will be an athletic and cycling gala. The New Zealand Amateur Rowing Association regatta takes place on Monday, March 23, and on Tuesday, March 24, there will be a monster school fete and sports. On the next day a grand military tournament will be held on the Napier Park racecourse. An interesting ceremony took place in the Cathedral on Sunday, when the old Battalion colours were given into the sacred keeping of the church. There was a monster turn-out of Volunteers, and the public, and the ceremony was most impressive.

Fifty years ago there was no province of Hawke’s Bay. The area now the scene of so many social and industrial activities was a region of swamp, forest and grazing ground administered from Welling-

ton. Native troubles abounded. Hawke's Bay will not have completed its fiftieth year as a province till the 31st of October next. Thirty years ago the value of the borough for rating purposes was in round figures £38,000. To-day rates are collected from properties whose letting values reach the total of £ 105,000, representing a capital value of fully two millions sterling. Thirty years ago Napier was not picturesque. What is now called Port Ahuriri, and was then styled the Spit, was a wilderness of desolation, the main features of which were shingle wastes and lagoons. The town consisted of hills on the one side, then beginning to be built upon, and on the other side, of two stretches of shingle running nearly north and south, and roughly parallel with each other. Between the shingle banks was a foul and fetid lagoon. Beyond tho inner bank was another and larger lagoon, cut off from what is known as the inner- harbour by the road from Napier to Taradale. What is now Napier, is, in fact, apart from the hills, a “manufactured article.” The town had to be “made” in the most literal sense of that word. The outer lagoon has also been reclaimed, and where formerly schooners could sail is now fertile land, from two to three feet higher in level than any other portion of the flats. Napier now is a picturesque town. Something of this is due to advantages of site, the sweep of the bay and the expanse of the waters confined by its shores being Nature’s gifts to Napier. But it is astonishing how much the natural prospect has been enhanced by what man has done. The sweep of the bay did not strike one so forcibly when a fifteen-feet road fringed with a few humble cottages was the coign of vantage from which the bay was viewed. The esplanade, wide and clean, and bordered with Norfolk Island pines, does by its mere existence, emphasise and accentuate even if it does not add to, the beauty of the outlook. With reference to the

breakwater, the first block of the structure was laid on January 25. 1887. and on December 31st last, the length of finished work was 2,674 feet. When completed the area of the harbour pro-

vided will be about 120 acres, with a depth for more than half that area of 27 feet at low water spring tide. A recent contract let to the Ferro-Concrete Company provides for extensions to the Glasgow- wharf, so that in about 18

months ocean liners will be able to berth there. In 1891 the capital value of the Napier Harbour Board rating district was assessed at six and a-half millions. It is now twelve millions. The Napier

of to-day is a bright clean town with handsome residences on the hills, up-to-date business premises, and with a natural asset in the shape of a climate almost without an equal in the wide world for mildness and salubrity.