Australia -- Description and travel; New Zealand -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
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 assembling 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 levée 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account