were charted and no hindrance to safe navigation, and a mile in distance often helps towards saving a tide or securing daylight into an anchorage. Further, if a ship is being watched carefully, as she must be in narrow waters, she is in my opinion far safer than if she is taking the broadest part of the channel anyhow. I do not, however, wish to dogmatise, only to point out that for many reasons it is desirable to be accurate even when traversing waters that are well known. There is little need to say anything concerning the beauties of Auckland Harbour. Kipling has said it all in “The Seven Seas.” And certainly as I saw it that afternoon it well deserved the praises bestowed upon it. But my mind went back to that other afternoon, twenty years before, when I was there under vastly different conditions. In my mind I could see again that beautiful ship _Tyburnia_ anchored under the shadow of that wonderful crater Rangitoto, and the harbour crowded with transports of all description, dominated by the imposing presence of H.M.S. _Miranda_. And in the very berth at the Queen’s Wharf where one lay in the little _Alwynton_ we now lay in the finest ship that had yet been in the harbour. I confess to having experienced a feeling of pride, though unfortunately its duration was short. It would have been difficult to find fault with the welcome that was extended both to the ship and myself personally. Perhaps the first feeling of annoyance was caused by the pertinacity of the newspaper reporters, for we had not had anything of the sort at the Cape, and I did not then realise, as I have since done to the full, how very useful it is to get all the advertisement possible. But it was gently hinted to me that interviews were the custom of the country and that it was desirable to fall in with it. This once being understood there was no more trouble. Again we were to be a show ship, and do a lot of entertaining, and the Company’s directors were coming up from Christchurch to do the thing properly. I looked forward to their advent with no great degree of pleasure, for at best directors are kittle cattle to handle. But in this particular case I found myself confronted with as nice a group of men as one could wish to meet. Indeed, the general impression made upon me by the New Zealand men I had met was that they were as a whole vastly superior to the average colonial man one had been in the habit of meeting. In fact it was easy to recognise a considerable leaven of public school boys from the old country. The Northern Club at Auckland had opened its hospitable doors to me the day before the arrival of my directors from the south, and I was playing a game of billiards with an exceedingly nice fellow I had met there. His name was John Studholm, and at the conclusion of our game he observed casually that he was one of the directors of the New Zealand Steamship Company. I am glad to say that it was the commencement of a friendship that lasted.