On the whole, there are many advantageous results from a sea-voyage. One's geography improves apace, and numberless incidents occur pregnant with interest to a landsman; moreover, there are sure to be many on board who have travelled far and wide, and one gains a great deal of information about all sorts of races and places. One effect is, perhaps, pernicious, but this will probably soon wear off on land. It awakens an adventurous spirit, and kindles a strong desire to visit almost every spot upon the face of the globe. The captain yarns about California and the China seas--the doctor about Valparaiso and the Andes--another raves about Hawaii and the islands of the Pacific--while a fourth will compare nothing with Japan. The world begins to feel very small when one finds one can get half round it in three months; and one mentally determines to visit all these places before coming back again, not to mention a good many more. I search my diary in vain to find some pretermitted adventure wherewith to give you a thrill, or, as good Mrs. B. calls it, "a feel"; but I can find none. The mail is going; I will write again by the next. CHAPTER III Aspect of Port Lyttelton--Ascent of Hill behind it--View--Christ Church- -Yankeeisms--Return to Port Lyttelton and Ship--Phormium Tenax--Visit to a Farm--Moa Bones. January 27, 1860.--Oh, the heat! the clear transparent atmosphere, and the dust! How shall I describe everything--the little townlet, for I cannot call it town, nestling beneath the bare hills that we had been looking at so longingly all the morning--the scattered wooden boxes of houses, with ragged roods of scrubby ground between them--the tussocks of brown grass--the huge wide-leafed flax, with its now seedy stem, sometimes 15 or 16 feet high, luxuriant and tropical-looking--the healthy clear-complexioned men, shaggy-bearded, rowdy-hatted, and independent, pictures of rude health and strength--the stores, supplying all heterogeneous commodities--the mountains, rising right behind the harbour to a height of over a thousand feet--the varied outline of the harbour now smooth and sleeping. Ah me! pleasant sight and fresh to sea-stricken eyes. The hot air, too, was very welcome after our long chill. We dined at the table d'hote at the Mitre--so foreign and yet so English--the windows open to the ground, looking upon the lovely harbour. Hither come more of the shaggy clear-complexioned men with the rowdy hats; looked at them with awe and befitting respect. Much grieved to find beer sixpence a glass. This was indeed serious, and was one of the first intimations which we received that we were in a land where money flies like wild-fire.