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Chapter XXII.
CHRISTCHURCH.
“Ah ! strange he should be silent now,
Whose life ran like a foaming flood.”
We had to spend our last day at Christchurch in and about the city itself, if only to discover wherein lay its claim to being “so very English.” Then, too, we had some shopping to do, partly to sample the shops and partly to invest in some garments necessary for our walking expedition to Milford Sound.
So first we made a round of the shops and then, having finally made our purchases at Ballantyne’s—(chiefly because it reminded us of dear old far-off “Debenham’s”, but also, I must own, because their things seemed to be of rather better quality than the others!) we visited the Museum, which is considered the best in the colony. It undoubtedly has the most delightful position, for it looks out on to the Avon, and its entrance is a charming lime-avenued road that goes past the Exhibition.
The Museum was to blame for our being very late for luncheon; it is really a very fascinating place. The smoked Maori heads and the cruel-looking weapons and instruments of greenstone that they used in warfare and for tattoing, the great cases of mighty Moa skeletons, the stones, quartzes, minerals and fossils, the Maori canoes and carvings, besides the foreign exhibits from the South Sea Islands, Japan, China, &c., &c., there were enough of all these to occupy days, but it was the cases containing relics of the early pioneers and “Canterbury pilgrims” the letters from emigrants to their friends at home, with the quaintest advice in them, the stilted official letters, funny sketches of the landings and first settlements, early newspapers, and so on,—that engrossed
