end of the city under different names, was at one time on the water’s edge, but now there are streets below and between it and the extensive wharves. The town is beautifully clean and well-kept, especially the wharves; the streets are wide, the buildings a credit to the enterprise of the citizens, who have to take possible and probable earthquakes into consideration, and there is a splendid service of electric cars.
And the hills behind the houses are deliciously green where they are not aflame with gorse; in the Botanical gardens, the private gardens, and the big rambling cemetery, there are clumps of native bush, tree-fern, and cabbage-palm that makes the terraces above Lambton Quay look quite countrified; and in five minutes either by electric tram or the cable cars Wellingtonians can be “far from the madding crowd” and out in the country.
Unhappily we had to say good-bye to Colonel Deane at Wellington, for he could not go on with us to the South Island. But we made the most of his last day, though he would not let Mrs Greendays and me do all the sight-seeing we wanted to because of a dance we were all going to at Government House in the evening.
Captain Greendays and he had been out long before we met them at breakfast, and the sight of the shops had evidently reminded them of the fact that we had no mackintoshes, for they refused to go anywhere or make any plans for the day until we had each invested in one. In vain we protested that they would be useless now and merely encumbrances, for we seemed to have left the region of mist and rain at Tamaranui. But they insisted, for our next journey was to be down the West coast, and Colonel Deane said that it was never safe to travel there, nor indeed anywhere in New Zealand, without a wet weather equipment. So we had to submit, and went shopping, extremely sceptical as to the prices and quality and style we were likely to find. And to our surprise we found the shops very up-to-date, and the prices remarkably moderate considering the high duties levied on all imported goods, and especially on ready-made clothing of all descriptions, including gloves, hosiery, and foot-gear.
We bought our mackintoshes and various other things that became absolutely necessary directly we saw them, at a big shop known as the “D.I.C.,” a drapery establishment which has branches in Dunedin and Christchurch, and so would permit our changing anything that did not suit when we arrived at those towns. We were greatly surprised at the size and description of the place. It is very up-to-date, actually furnished with lifts, which are still somewhat a novelty in New Zealand, and the choice of goods was decidedly a revelation.
When we had finished our shopping we went to a tea-room on an upper floor, but more to see the people than to “do as the Romans do” and drink tea at 11 a.m. The place was nearly as full at that hour as a London tea-room would have been at 4 p.m., for one institution is as popular as the other out here. The great majority of the colonials begin the day with an early cup of tea, have it again for breakfast, again at eleven, again at luncheon (which is generally
