MR JAMES SMITH ON DUNEDIN.

Evening Star, Issue 2903, 8 June 1872, Page 3

MR JAMES SMITH ON DUNEDIN.

This gentleman, on his return to Melbourne, contributed to the-/Jiv/us the third of his series of articles entitled “ Round New Zealand.” In it he deals with Oamam and Dunedin in these words : The name of Oamaru will become most widely known hereafter in Australia in connection with the beautiful building stone which is quarried in its immediate neighborhood. Competent judges in Dunedin—architects and builders— pronounce it to be superior to the celebrated material quarried at Caen, in i' ormandy. During a long residence in Australia I have seen no stone superior to that of Oamaru in grain, color, and facility of manipulation. Most of the buildings in that town are constructed with it, and the Bank of New Zealand, the Masonic Hall, and the principal hotel are edifices which would not discredit Collins street. Per contra, Oamaru, after a heavy rain, is one of the greasiest towns in the British empire. The soil appears to be a sort of saponaceous clay, upon which you sometimes slide, and in which you sometimes sink. It was not until 1 came to Oamaru that I comprehended a phenomenon which first attracted my attention at Christchurch. Every other man 1 met with, gentle or simple, had such large feet; and the boots exposed for sale in the shops were also of extreme sizes. Nature, I presume, is adapting the human foot to the soil, and expanding the surface of the former, so that it may float like a raft over the latter in its semifluid condition during tho winter mouths. I make a present of the suggestion to Mr Darwin. . . , A run of seven hours brings us into Bort

Chalmers, picturesquely situated at the entrance of the estuary at the head of which Dunedin is built; and as the channel becomes much shallower at the former point, a sniajler steamer conveys passengers to the capital. I hope I shall not wound the susceptibilities either of the old identities” or of the “new iniquities” of that city by describing it as a miniature Melbourne. It is not so in virtue of its configurfttioti, or of its situation | for both bear a greater resemblance to those of Hobart Town than to those of our own City. But Melbourne men have left their visible impress upon the street architecture and upon the mercantile enterprise of the place, in the stratification of its society, there is found an underlay of safe, solid, but somewhat slow-going and sober-sided, Scotchmen, and an overlay of restless, speculative Victorians, together with a fair spriukling of the Chosen People, of Germans, and of Chinese. But the two strata belong to distinct formations. They are juxtaposed, but they are unrelated. The contact is close, but there is no amalgamation. According to the testimony of the new-comers, the old settlers viewed with undisguised uneasiness, if not with actual aversion, the irruption of Southern barbarians from Australia. Otago was Sf purely North British settlement, and its founders wanted on interlopers. They intended to reproduce, in a country which resembled in many of its physical features the “land of brown heath and shaggy wood,” the principal characteristics of the social, religious, aud industrial life of Auld Scotland, to transplant the faith of John Calvin to the soil of Otago, to cause the hills around Port Chalmers to reverberate the mellifluous accents of the dulcet bagpipes to recreate themselves with Caledonian sports and to cultivate the serviceable oat-plant by labour strengthened and sustained by its nutritious meal. Accordingly, they named the nearest river the Water of Leith, they bestowed upon the principal thoroughfare the designation of Princes street and George street, they established a pjaoe and a Canougate—l am not qujte sure that they did pot contemplate calling the prison the Tolbooth-and they hung up the

portrait of Robert Burns—as a sort of ijenius loci— in barbers’ shops and bar parlors. But the purely Scottish aspect of the place, and the exclusively Caledonian composition of its ' society, lias been naturally modified by the influx of South Britons and other “ foreigners ” from the mainland. The root of the community is that of the thistle, but the plant is sprouting out rose-buds and shamrock leaves. The “ old identities,” however, while groaning In the spirit at this incursion of Vandals, turned evil to commodity by granting to the invaders short leases, upon highly remunerative terms, of the town sections, which had originally cost their owners Ll2 10s each, and can now exclaim to the lessees, Sic vos non robis , &o. Much depends, as wc all know, upon first impressions, and a strager’s first impressions of Dunedin, formed when the steamer rounds a bend in the estuary, and the whole place opens upon him, aredecidely favorable. He sees a crescent-shaped and compact city, rising from the water side, with an undulating surface, and a bold background of hills, green of hue, and dotted with white villas and cosy cottage residences. The tapering spire of the new “ First Church, th clockturret of the University, and the tower of the hospital, rise prominently into view, while other public buildings challenge attention by their magnitude or position. Nor are the favorable impressions thus produced dissipated upon landing. A few steps conduct you into the heart of the city, where the University, the Government buildings, the Cargill Cross, and some handsome hotels, stores, and shops are grouped together in effective companionship. You are in the main artery of Dunedin. It is upwards of two miles long, and bears the name of Princes street as far as an open space called the Octagon, from which point, as it proceeds northward, it assumes the title of George street. Not only is there a change of name, but a mutation of character hereabouts. Princesstreet is essentially mercantile. In it a v e congregated the banks, the principal warehouses, the auction-rooms, the best shops, the largest hotels, and the cab-stands. _ Beyond the Octagon, a marked falling-off is apparent in the character of the houses and shop?, and in the stocks displayed in the windows of the latter. It is like walking out of Collins street, Melbourne, into Smith street, Collingwooi. At the intersection of Frederick street with George street, there is a sudden transition from the urban to the suburban. . . I believe the City of Dunedin was originally laid out upon paper in Edinburgh, and that when the site came to be inspected it was found that some of the streets were planned so as to ascend a precipice vertically, and that no account had been taken of the irregularity of the surface. By dint of a good deal of ingenuity, by making cuttings here, and filling U P hollows there, Mr Millar succeeded in licking the place into shape; but its general contour is still rugged and romantic. Within a stone’s throw of the main street, you will come upon a little glen, with its one house, its orchard, paddock, garden, and hawthorn hedges, as rural in appearance as if the spot were miles away in the bush Almost abutting on the same street is a lodginghonss, perched upon an isolated knoll at such an elevation that the green platform on which it stands is on a level with the roof of a three story hotel in its immediate neighborhood. And the city is full of these oddities and anomalies, which, while they add to its picturesquedess, are not conducive to the symmetrical arrangement of its thoroughfares. In fact, it is so hilly and uneven that I suspect its inhabitants will acquire a distinctive gait; so that as it is said you may everywhere recognise a Wellington man by his holding his hat on his head with both hands, because it is always blowing either half a gale or a whole gale in the “empire city, so in the time to come we may well believe that a I nnedin man or woman will he recognisable in other places by his or her habit of leaning forward as if breasting an ascent. At the northern extremity of the city are the Caledonian Society’s grounds—an enclosure of five acres, with a permanent grand stand capable of seating 2,000 persons, exceedingly well’de igned bythenbiquit ms and irrepressible Millar, F.S. A. lam afraid the countrymen of Buchanan must have forgotten the lessons they learned in their Latin grammars, for on the back and front < f this edifice there appears, in large raised letters, the motto of the royal arms of Scotland, rendered in this wise —“Nemo me impune lacesset. ”