Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/112

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64
PICTURESQUE NEW ZEALAND

of volcanic Mount Eden, One Tree Hill, and Mount Hobson. Rounding Cautley's hidden guns, the steamer plowed the Waitemata, "the waters of affliction." On the mainland to the left were long, indented walls of sandstone, green, rolling meadows, groves and hedges of trees, scattered homes, and beach resorts; on shrub-mantled cliffs to the right, the pretty suburbs of Devonport, Stanley Bay, Birkenhead, Northcote, and Chelsea, where the Colonial Sugar Refining Company extracts sugar from Fijian cane.

Straight ahead, climbing hills and filling valleys, was Greater Auckland, one hundred thousand strong. Away beyond, overlooking the Tasman Sea, hung the blue haze of the Waitakere ranges, where the city gets its water supply. Well back from Auckland's shore, across Cemetery Gully, swung the great arch of one of the largest ferro-concrete bridges in the world. On an elevation overlooking the gully stood the huge pile of Auckland Hospital, maintained partly by a Government pound-for-pound subsidy. Nearer the shore the eye was quickly attracted by the shapely tower of St. Matthew's, the city's handsomest and costliest church, and the spire of St. Patrick's. Between these churches rises a building which Aucklanders call a sky-scraper. It has only seven stories, but its position is so elevated and the buildings around it are so low that it looks much higher than it is.

Only two other buildings in New Zealand have as many stories. When it was first proposed to erect a seven-