Down Under With the Prince Part 4

A fairy city of lights, outlining spires, roofs and street lines, lay by reflection in the black water of a broad still harbour, as the train skirted the low coast of Petone, landing-place of the first white settlers, eventually pa.s.sing through extensive suburbs and coming to a standstill in the station of Wellington. Here the reception was a climax to the demonstrations along the journey from Auckland. Mayor Luke, supported by the city councillors, in ermine and gold chains, received the Prince, as he alighted from the train. Mr. Ma.s.sey, and other members of the Dominion Government, were waiting at the entrance. Outside, one of the smartest captain's guards-of-honour imaginable was standing to attention, with band and colours. Beyond, restrained by a rope barrier, an enormous crowd cheered and cheered. The eye travelled over the heads of the nearer people, and then further away, and there was no thinning off. One then began to realize that one was looking up a broad street which climbed a hill, and that the entire hill was a palpitating ma.s.s of shouting humanity, dimly seen in the half-light of the illuminations.

Eventually the Royal procession got off in motor-cars, which took an hour to traverse the two miles of decorated route to Government House, where the Prince was to stay, so dense was the crowd along the route, so anxious were the people to get near him. There was no bad crushing, however, and nothing could exceed the good temper of the shouting, flag-flapping, clapping, laughing men, women and children, who pressed upon the motor-cars, formed a solid ma.s.s to the walls of substantial business houses on either hand, and crowded every window, balcony and roof commanding a view from above.

Similar scenes marked subsequent days of the Prince's visit to Wellington. Proceeding to Parliament buildings on the morning after he arrived, the pressure along the route was extraordinary. The town hall, where addresses were presented, on the way, was filled by all the most distinguished people of the country. The platform was occupied by the Members of the Legislature, headed by the Prime Minister, and including the Leader of the Opposition, the Mayors of the princ.i.p.al cities, and other representatives from all parts of New Zealand.

Proposing the Prince's health, at the official luncheon later in the day, Mr. Ma.s.sey, speaking in his capacity of Prime Minister, said everybody in New Zealand took personal happiness and satisfaction in the magnificent reception the Prince had had at all the centres in the North Island. "And I want to tell him," he continued, "that his experiences in the North Island will be repeated in the South."

One of the expeditions made from Wellington was across the harbour to Petone, where a well-staged pageant was held representing the landing of Captain Cook and his fellow adventurers from the barque _Endeavour_ in 1779, also that of the Reverend Samuel Marsden and other missionaries from the merchant-ship _Tory_ thirty-five years later. Naked warriors in war-canoes escorted each of the boat processions to the beach, and painted Maori chiefs received the white strangers hospitably on the sandy sh.o.r.e.

The occasion of the pageant was taken with happy appropriateness to present the Prince with samples of the finished product of the great industry with which the descendants of the early settlers have endowed New Zealand. The articles selected were rugs of beautiful softness and delightful warmth, made of wool grown in the interior, and carded, spun, dyed, and woven in mills close to the beach where the original missionaries landed. "A field which the Lord hath blessed" in every sense of the term.

Petone is the parent of the capital city of Wellington where the Governor, Legislative Council and elected House of Representatives together make up the "General a.s.sembly" which governs New Zealand.

X

SOUTH ISLAND

The still, crisp, autumn morning of the 22nd of May brought the _Renown_ into the silver inland sea of Charlotte Sound, with sunny hills sloping to the water's edge on either side--a great grey bird she looked, reflected in a jade-framed mirror. Rounding a steep guarding islet, the big ship anch.o.r.ed in view of the inner harbour, the pleasant little red-roofed whaling station of Picton climbing up the slope at the further end, the houses gay with familiar flowers, and homely with pecking fowls, amenities which one does not a.s.sociate with the wild work of the whaler. The industry as a matter of fact has declined from the status of its early days, though last year the blubber of forty-eight "humpbacks" was brought into port.

The entire population--typical British folk of any country town in England--had a.s.sembled and gave the Prince a rousing welcome with the usual address. From Picton the route was by train through a rich pastoral plain, past Tuamarina, scene of a long-past tragedy in New Zealand history, where a misunderstanding resulted in whites being ma.s.sacred by their Maori neighbours, one of those lamentable episodes which the now united Dominion is advisedly engaged in forgetting.

At Blenheim, a prosperous township, eighteen miles from Picton, which was the next stopping-place, the train was exchanged for motors, and a visit was paid to the local racecourse, where the inhabitants of the town of Blenheim and most of the surrounding country had come together.

Amongst them was a fine gathering of returned sailors, soldiers and cadets, also some fifty Maoris with painted faces, dressed in feather-covered mats, who gave one of their grave, shouting, stamping, grimacing national _hakas_ in honour of the Royal guest.

From Blenheim the party started on a seventy-mile motor-drive to Nelson, an expedition enlivened by similar scenes, though the solemn gaieties of the Maoris did not occur again. The road, which was of macadam in excellent repair, ran first through the green, open valley of the Pelorus river, the fields dotted with sheep, with many a row of tall poplar trees, yellowing in the still autumn air. Wooded hills closed in, on either side, as the cars progressed, until we found ourselves speeding along a winding, unfenced shelf on the side of a precipice, primeval forest covering the sides of the gorge, to which the procession clung, like a string of flies to a window-pane, as it swung round corners, often with a wall of rock on one side and a sheer drop of hundreds of feet upon the other, a few inches of macadamized shelf all that interposed between the outer wheels and eternity.

The driver of the Prince's car, a grey-headed Anglo-Saxon, was descended from men who had driven mail coaches along this road seventy years ago, when the route was anything but the tourist trip it has become to-day.

The Prince was shown corner after corner where early settlers and their vehicles had gone over the edge, to be gathered together at the bottom in an advanced state of disunion. He heard also the oft-told tale of the Maungatapu highwaymen, white desperadoes, who once made these Rai and w.a.n.gamoa hills their home, until they were rounded up and hanged by indignant gold-miners and settlers for iniquities which included the murdering of a wayfarer, after stripping him of his purse, though all that it contained was a solitary shilling. No allowance seemed to have been made by his avengers for a certain natural disappointment. From the Rai and w.a.n.gamoa highlands the road led downwards, through a gradually flattening land of apple-trees, still laden with ma.s.ses of enormous yellow and red fruit, past hundreds of acres of bare poles, where hops had recently been reaped, amongst fields of peach trees set in ordered ranks, through villages of red-roofed, verandahed wooden houses, where well-dressed women and extraordinarily chubby and sunburnt children strewed the chrysanthemums of autumn as the Prince went by. The white macadam of the country ultimately gave place to the dark asphalt of the town. Tram-lines appeared in the track, and the procession found itself amongst hurrahing crowds in Nelson city.

Nelson is built round a central hill. Driving up the main street, the Prince was in a lane of people, a waving ma.s.s of union jacks extending up the business street on either side, while in front was a natural grand-stand surmounted by the Gothic windows of a pink, wooden structure which rose out of the top of a variegated pyramid and was the Cathedral. It looked as if balanced upon a hunched-up, gaily-coloured Paisley shawl. As we approached, the base resolved itself into school-children in white, soldiers and cadets in khaki, with a phalanx of returned men in their habit as they lived. A grey stone platform, with steps leading up to it, was occupied by Nelson's officials, one of whom read an address of welcome. The remainder of the variegated colour scheme seen from the bottom of the street was due to the costumes of ladies who stood so close to one another that no peep of the green background came through.

Here the Prince performed the usual ceremonies that awaited him. He inspected guards-of-honour, clasped the hands of returned soldiers and pinned on their coats decorations won at the front. He also expressed to the Mayor and the crowd thanks for the reception and for the loyal sentiments of the address, which would be communicated to His Majesty the King, as well as hearty appreciation of the wonders of the country, and of the good service of its people in the war, with sympathy for those who had been disabled or had lost friends or relations. He demanded a whole holiday for the school-children, with the immense approval of the beneficiaries. The National Anthem was played and everybody went off to dinner.

On the following and subsequent days very similar experiences were encountered. The route from Nelson, after leaving the level country where more receptions were held at wayside townships, was along the steep rocky upper gorge of the Buller river, a clear stream which flows in a series of cascades through a narrow winding cleft in the mountains. The slope on either side is covered with dense forest of tree ferns and birches, broken by areas where the undergrowth has been cut down and fired. Quant.i.ties of blackened tree-trunks and half-burnt logs, upon a carpet of newly sprouted gra.s.s, told of the conversion of the impenetrable primeval forest into productive dairying fields--gra.s.s-seed having only to be scattered broadcast over the ashes after a shower to bring a quick and copious emerald crop.

The way gra.s.s develops in New Zealand is a continual wonder. The winters are so mild, and the rainfall so abundant, that growth goes on right through the year. Maturity comes so rapidly that it is said to be quite a common thing for the farmer to plough up pasture and re-sow it simply in order to get rid of weeds, a heavy hay-crop being reaped the very next season. Large areas of permanent, original pasture were also seen, especially in the Southern Island--tussock gra.s.s, which, as its name suggests, grows in k.n.o.bby tufts, but is not on that account to be despised as fodder, enormous numbers of sheep and cattle growing fat enough to kill for the market without any other nourishment. Turnips are raised, to help out the gra.s.s in the winter months, but this is only on a comparatively small scale. The greater part of the stock is entirely gra.s.s-fed. Lambing, calving and milking take place in the open, and steers go straight to the packing establishments, without previously seeing the inside of a building of any kind. This accounts for the profits that are being made out of sheep-farming, stock-raising and dairying in New Zealand, in spite of the enormous prices paid for land which, in good districts, is now changing hands at figures ranging up to 170 per acre.

The Prince learnt, also, in his long drives through the forest, of the nature of the timber; of the virtues of the tawny-foliaged _Rimu_, or red pine, used for the interiors of houses; of the light, easily worked _Kahikatea_, or white pine, for which such large demand has sprung up in New Zealand and Australia for making packing-cases for b.u.t.ter, that fears are felt lest forests, hitherto considered inexhaustible, should become worked out; also of the _Matai_, or silver pine, which seems to last for ever, even when exposed on such hard service as that of railway sleepers, without any creosoting or other artificial protection.

About noon, the cars emerged upon an open valley, and the Prince was given a public reception at Murchison, a village of wooden houses, which were found in holiday array, the decorations including ma.s.ses of holly in the fullest Christmas glory of ripe scarlet berries, a curious contemporary of the orchards, still loaded with unpicked apples, that we had seen in the Nelson valley only a few hours before. In the Murchison district alluvial gold-washing still goes on, but it is only a small survival of what once was a flourishing industry, the yellow metal that filled the west coast with diggers, fifty years ago, having almost entirely given out.

Beyond Murchison, the gorges again contracted. The river became a white torrent, rushing through a dark, winding channel, hedged with big, grey rocks, above which rose sage-green, forested mountains. About six in the evening we emerged on the Inangahua--"mother of whitebait"--tributary.

Here the valley widened out, and we saw a wonderful west-coast sunset.

The mountains took on vivid aquamarine blue and imperial purple, shading into palest pink, as they faced towards the light or away from it.

Against this background, yellow-frosted poplars and scarlet-leaved wild cherries stood out in sharpest contrast, the whole, with a pearly sky, producing an effect of exquisite fantasy. A soft brown owl, fluttering into our staring faces, recalled the fact that night had come, and that shelter was still far off.

The Prince traversed the Inangahua marshes in the dark, reaching the west-coast township of Reefton late at night. The streets, nevertheless, were thronged with people. Illuminations and fireworks were in full swing, and His Royal Highness had a reception in no way inferior to his daylight greetings elsewhere. At Reefton he was in Westland of the warm heart, the Wales of New Zealand, a land of collieries, lumbering, gold-mining, and fishing, home of the late Richard Seddon, whose eloquence did so much, in the long years of his Prime Ministership, to bind New Zealand in that close alliance with Great Britain which bore such gallant fruit when the great call came.

With Reefton I should cla.s.s Inangahua, Greymouth, Westport, and last, but most important of them all, Hokitika, head-quarters of the province, which is represented in the New Zealand Government by Mr. Thomas Seddon, son of the late Prime Minister, and one of the first members of Parliament to volunteer for active service when the war began. In all of these centres the Prince was most warmly received, Hokitika particularly distinguishing itself by the size of its gatherings, and the good taste bestowed on the decorations of its streets.

The Prince's journey from Reefton to Westport was by motor through the lower gorges of the Buller river, where the scenery was again magnificent. Much of the route was along a narrow winding shelf, a precipice dropping to the water beneath, while above the rocks overhung the road, sometimes, as at a spot appropriately named the Devil's Eye, to the extent of completely over-arching. The steep mountain-sides around were covered with dense vegetation, gaunt Rimu trees smothered in the embrace of flame-flowered Rata vines, and green lance-leaved _kiakia_ creepers, with a thick undergrowth of tree-ferns standing erect like pirouetting dancers in stiff green skirts and long black legs, amongst a lesser crowd of gorse and bracken. The silence of the gorge was broken only by the ripple of water and the sweet flute-notes of grey Tui birds, a delicate contrast with the clangour of the church bells, rung in honour of the Prince's visit, when the procession of motor-cars emerged upon the open coast, and reached the mining township of Westport. Here the reception was on the level, within sight of an inclined road down which is brought what claims to be the best admiralty coal in the world. This coal is mined high up in the hills above Westport, and was burnt upon H.M.S. _Calliope_ when she thrilled the world by beating out of the hurricane off Samoa in 1899. The Prince returned in the evening to Hokitika. In an open square in this city next morning, where the snows of Mount Cook shone out on the horizon, he was presented with a digger's leather bag containing nuggets of west-coast gold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WESTPORT CHILDREN: A TUMULT OF FLAGS AND FLOWERS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DUNEDIN'S WELCOME]

From Hokitika the route was by train, via the labour-controlled township of Greymouth, and up the fine Brunner valley, pa.s.sing a number of winding-shafts of mines producing good steam-coal, where miners were making 2 5_s_. daily, and more of them were urgently needed. In the afternoon Otira was reached, where New Zealand's longest railway tunnel, which when finished will complete the hitherto broken connexion across the island, was in active course of construction. Here the Prince left the railway and travelled partly by a four-horsed coach, and partly on foot, amidst heights and glaciers, over the magnificent Arthur's pa.s.s, which overlies the tunnel, itself two thousand feet above sea level. The tunnel is one of the big engineering achievements of the century. It is five and a quarter miles long, and has been so accurately laid out that when, a few months since, the excavations from the two ends met in the middle, they were out only by three-quarters of an inch in alignment and one and a half inches in level, a minuteness of error of which Mr.

Holmes, Engineer-in-Chief, and his technical staff may rightly be proud.

Cheers, every few minutes, from people it was too dark to see, broke in upon the rattle of the Royal train speeding to reach Christchurch by dinner-time. Jolts at intervals informed us that we were crossing sidings in the suburbs of a considerable city. Presently light shone into the windows from outside, and we came to a standstill in a railway station that might have been that of Oxford. Upon a red carpet, stretched from the entrance to where the Prince's saloon drew up, was standing Mayor Thacker, with ermine, chain and c.o.c.ked hat, also members of the corporation, waiting to welcome the Royal guest. By the time one could get through the throng upon the platform from the front of the train, the Prince, who was in the rear where a lane had been kept, was inspecting a captain's guard of men and colours in the presence of the dense, cheering crowd that pressed on the rope-barriers. A procession followed, through two miles of decorated, illuminated, cheering, flag-waving streets, the route kept with difficulty by police and territorials. The cars soon separated from one another in the press.

Those who were towards the tail of the procession lost sight of the Prince. Small boys waved paper flags in their faces, and had to be discouraged from climbing on the radiator. Larrikins decided that one correspondent was the Prince's doctor and christened him "Pills."

Another, the substantial representative of the "Daily Telegraph," was found to resemble Mr. Ma.s.sey, and was cheered as "Bill." Presently the procession came to a standstill altogether, the crowd being squeezed tight up all round, in front, as well as on the steps and mud-guards.

Horn-tooting and endeavours to move forward an inch at a time, coupled with the vigorous a.s.sistance of the police, gradually got us on the move again, and amid a din of laughing and cheering we saw the Prince being got out of his car and carried into the club where he was to stay, to reappear a few moments later on the balcony and wave acknowledgments to the people, by this time squeezed solid once more.

Similar scenes occurred on the following day, the same cheerful, friendly, British crowd a.s.sembling in the streets and blocking the wide Latimer Square, where the Prince received a number of formal addresses, inspected a fine body of boy-scouts, and was serenaded, first in Welsh, and afterwards in Gaelic, by groups of nice-looking girls in the quaintness of chimney-pot hats and kilts. Proceeding afterwards to Hagley park, the Prince reviewed some four thousand territorials, and shook hands with two thousand returned men. Later in the evening he held an informal levee at the civic hall, where he shook hands with another two thousand people. By this time, if there is a scientific way of accomplishing the gesture of friendship, His Royal Highness had probably learned it.

Christchurch is the third biggest city of New Zealand. A larger proportion of the inhabitants is said to be of English extraction than in any other city of the world outside the British islands. Certainly it is one of the most home-like places we saw upon the tour with its well-paved, well-lighted streets, fine business quarter, and pleasant residential suburbs full of comfortable houses, each standing in its own grounds. In Christchurch clear water courses down the gutter on one side of many of the streets. This is from subterranean springs, tapped by artesian borings, by means of which the entire city is supplied. The water is supposed to be derived from the snows of the southern New Zealand Alps as they soak into the valley of the Waimakariri--"freezing water"--river which flows into the Canterbury plain.

A fine harbour, with water so deep that even the _Renown_ was able to lie alongside the wharf, exists eight miles off, at Lyttleton. Until one goes over the ground it seems strange that a large city should have been built so far away as eight miles from the harbour connected with it. The lie of the hills explains this however. The harbour of Lyttleton is so hedged in by steep slopes that it has been considered impossible to build a city around it, and Christchurch occupies the nearest level ground across the range. Connexion is facilitated by a mile-long railway tunnel, one of the oldest undertakings of its kind in New Zealand.

Although so close to the hills, Christchurch stands upon almost absolutely level ground, a corner indeed of the big Canterbury plain, _par excellence_ the farming country of the Dominion. The city contains cold-storage plant, a biscuit factory, and wool and hide establishments, all of which proved their Imperial value during the war. It also possesses one of the best high schools in the country, run on the lines of a British public school. Being also the distributing centre for a large and flourishing farming community, Christchurch is going ahead rapidly, and has an excellent future before it, its south-of-England climate making it a favourite place of residence.

Farming is not in New Zealand an occupation penalized by the dread of hardship or burden as one is apt to find it elsewhere, largely because of the real love the New Zealander has for the land. The Mayor of one of the larger cities we visited in the Northern Island, himself a prosperous wholesale grocer, told me that neither of his two sons, when they returned to New Zealand from France, would look at his business, though he had kept it going longer than he would otherwise have done, with the express purpose of handing it on to them, there being no one else in his family to whom to leave it. They both insisted upon being set up as farmers. The reason they gave was that farming life was pleasanter and less exacting than any kind of business, and this although they had, with farming, to begin all over again, whereas in the wholesale grocery trade they had a long established and flourishing concern ready to step into.

The fifteen-year-old son of a prominent official said to his mother, who pa.s.sed on the irreverent observation to me, "Isn't father a loony to do office work when he might have a farm of his own?" The boy's mind was typical. I met refined women who said they wouldn't live anywhere in the world but on a farm, and never once did I come across anyone who was on the land and wanted to get off it. This att.i.tude of mind has the qualification that it is sheep and cattle-farming that is referred to, and not dairy-farming, which is infinitely more exacting, though, at present prices, and especially since the discovery of the possibilities of the dried milk-trade, definitely more profitable. This is because the sheep and cattle-farmer is not continually tied, and, while he has to work hard at times, can also often get away, whereas the dairy-farmer must be on hand all the year round, to see that the milking is attended to, and that the milk is promptly disposed of at the creameries, of which numbers are springing up, mostly run, upon a co-operative basis, by groups of farmers themselves.

This pa.s.sion of the New Zealander for the land is a trait of the most far-reaching significance. It accounts for the largeness of the rural, as opposed to the urban, population in this Dominion. It has much to do, also, with the splendid physique of the average New Zealander, and the amazing healthfulness and longevity he appears to enjoy. This applies especially to the middle cla.s.ses, amongst whom there is extraordinary immunity from such city diseases as consumption. The death-rate from tuberculosis of New Zealand is less than half that of England and Wales.

It affects also the whole political outlook of the Dominion. The farmer everywhere tends to be conservative in his views, for he has a stake in the country. His farm may be small or large. The individual holding, on the average, is probably not more than from thirty to eighty acres, an area which even the most unskilled of labourers may hope, in the end, to own; and one which, under the favourable agricultural and climatic conditions prevailing, is sufficient to keep both the man himself and his family. The number of holdings is therefore rapidly increasing, and the effect which this has upon the whole political atmosphere is incalculable. Nominally, the Government of the day may be Conservative or it may be Liberal, but the voter's choice is one of men, rather than of policy. Labour itself, as has already been pointed out, has become conservative. It thus comes about that, in spite of the possession of both manhood suffrage and womanhood suffrage, there is probably no country in the world less open to subversive social theories than is New Zealand.

XI

ENTERPRISE IN NEW ZEALAND

It is impossible to travel through New Zealand and to meet the men it sends into public life, without being impressed by the high character, moderation and conservativeness which characterize politics in this Dominion.

There is no country where the spirit of live and let live is more fully operative, none where charges of political corruption are less common, and none where the spirit of co-operation for public ends is more general. The "ins" at present call themselves Reformers, he "outs"

Liberals, but, so far as I have been able to make out, Mr. Ma.s.sey's Government retains its majority far more on account of the popularity of himself and his colleagues than because the general policy for which they stand differs very materially from that which would be adopted if Sir Joseph Ward and his Liberal supporters were to return to power. In consequence, again, of practically all voters having a stake in the country, of one kind or another, whether in the form of house-property, land or money, the administration they elect is intensely individualistic, and probably there is no spot on earth where property is more respected, or personal rights more secure.

The financial position of the Dominion is also relatively good, for although New Zealand's public debt bears a proportion to its population not far different from the corresponding proportion in England, there are two factors which make the situation of the Dominion definitely more favourable. One of these is the larger potential margin of taxability in New Zealand, owing to the greater individual prosperity of its inhabitants and the extent of its still undeveloped resources. The other is that so much of New Zealand's public debt has been invested in remunerative public works. Out of a total debt of 194,000,000 no less than 40,000,000 has been put into the acquisition or construction of the three thousand five hundred miles of railway existing in the country, an investment which itself pays the whole of the interest charges concerned. Indeed, at present rates for labour and materials, this happy country possesses a property worth probably more than twice what it has cost to obtain.