family hotels, might be counted on the fingers of a one-armed soldier.
Oram's hotel is comfortable, clean, quiet, and the host is obliging, and looks personally after the welfare of his guests. It is a favourite house with passengers waiting for the San Francisco steamer, and tourists generally.
Let no visitor to Auckland omit a trip to North Shore, and a drive out to Lake Takapuna. The scenery will amply repay the trouble, although in the endeavour to reach the lake may be included a jolting vehicle, a larrikin driver, a pair of jibbing horses, necessitating a walk up every incline over rough scoriæ or through blinding dust. Truth compels me to add that this was the only occasion on which I saw a badly-horsed conveyance round about Auckland. As a rule, the visitor will mark with delight the grandly developed, robust, well-fed horses. The trams are served by splendid animals. The strain is not that of the fast but slender weeds which are so common about Sydney. The breed is a mixture of the Suffolk Punch, the Clydesdale, the Cleveland, with a good dash of the thoroughbred, and they appear to be generously fed. In the old war times the Commissariat got down the very finest stock procurable from Tasmania and New South Wales, paying 200l. and even 300l. for a good mare. They bred for work and usefulness in these olden times, not for short races and gambling handicaps, and the result is seen now in the magnificent chargers and sleek Samsons which one sees in every conveyance.
