LETTERS FROM A TRAVELLING OORRESPONDENT.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 185, 8 July 1874, Page 2

LETTERS FROM A TRAVELLING OORRESPONDENT.

n 0: i. It will not I hope be uninteresting to the readers of this journal to hear from an old resident in Napier, who has just returned hither, after a visit to that country of a couple of months' duration, what is going on there. I, shall therefore take the liberty of the press, and write a few letters to you,: in which I shall endeavor to describe what I heard and saw, from which I venture to say that your readers will derive .ifcnftp amusement, and, at same time, some, not unimportant information.. The first thing that strikes the eye of the stranger upon landing at the new wharf on the Eastern Spit, is the very remarkable earth works being slowly but surely carried on round Battery Point for the railway line. The old hill is so scared and seamed with pick and shovel that it requires some strong recollections of past times to recognize its familiar face. But of the railway and its works we will discourse by and bye. ' I noticed nothing remarkable upon the Spit as new, beyond a very extraordinary building, erected by the world-known firm of Kinross and Co., built of concrete, which means a composition of lime and and shingle-—an excellent material providing the lime is good, but upon that condition only. The extraordinary part of the building, however, is the attempt at architectural decoration, than which nothing can’ be more .absurd. Beyond this, and a tremendous row occasioned by somebody drinking too much, and fighting furiously, and making a fearful shindy, there was nothing more than usual to be seen or heard and even this last little episode is not so uncommon as I a visitor might wish, at least so I am told. However, letjus sing “ Rule Britannia; Britannia rules the wa-a-aves,” and there it would seem she stops short, and doesn’t attempt to come ashore. May the British Lion live for ever. No slavery! certainly not. We take cab and are driven over the celebrated Shakespeare hill, and as you

ride you cannot but remark what a number-of new houses have sprung up on either hand, perched upon the tops and upon the sides, and in all directions about the precipitous hills forming the Island of Scinde. Some have two rooms ; some, more, even I may venture to assert as many as twenty, for windows and doors gleam and grin all over the once desolate hill. Decoration of one sort or another is attempted according to the taste of the owners, with more or less of architectural display. Here a gable, there a dorina, ostentatiously towering above the world. Famous are ye builders of great houses ever since the days of Babel! Gardening too appears to attract some attention and some taste. Having safely performed the perilous descent of that tremendous precipice known as the Shakespeare-road. (Why, by the way, that genial dramatist’s name should be associated with such a break neck of a place, it is difficult to determine.) We are landed opposite —opposite! —what I Why as I live it is the old original Government Building ! In the midst of general progress all round, there it stands ■yet, and still retains unimpared through all the changing scenes of its life, its well gained reputation for melancholy lack of paint and repair, and as an astounding evidence of what. carpenters can do to make their fellow creatures miserable, toiling as they Who pass their time within the dubious shelter of tliose ricketty timbers, no doubt do for the good of the country from “ rising morn till dewy eve.” How on earth public or any other kind of business can be carried on in that "dismal old shed is' a wonder to all beholders. There must be a most extraordinary confusion of minds. You may fancy the startling effect produced in the Magisterial mind just asa witness is being sworn and the clerk has got as far as “S'elp you God," to hear it announced in stentorian tone, by some patriotic member of the Provincial Council (then sitting) that “ the country is going to the devil,” and so on. But I suppose in the midst of such a mixture of sounds and words, every ewe knows the bleat of its own lamb, and so they jog along, and knock the public business off somehow. The old building looks so villainously shakey, and leers upon the passers bye with such a most atrociously knowing look, as much as to say ’* Ah! my boy, if you had seen and heard in your life time as much as I ha, e in the matter of the management of public affairs, it would make you moult; but mums the word; I'm in the Government service, and had better look-out, or I’ll be turned into a hospital for decayed Government pensioners, or put to some other equally disgraceful use.” Strange that a people so wealthy, and so extremely self complacent as the Napierians are, should be so indifferent to the appearance of their public buildings . and institutions; they seem to have. no pride in those, to me, at least, most important outward evidences of the prosperity of the community. Take for example the Club, which, in every other place where I have stayed, is quite a prominent feature in street architecture; in Napier, it is but a poor, insignificant, building, stowed away in an out-of-the-road corner, quite cut off you may say from all human sympathy, and most effectually from all obstrusive traffic. In short, this institution—which ought to be, amidst so much wealth and boasted refinement, a very museum of all that is refined, elegant, and lively, — fills the visitor with a strange and dismal foreboding that he will be most dreadfully bored. While the wines and cookery are undeniably excellent, there yet hangs over the festive table, and mingled with the savory odours of delicate soups and other fragrant and agreeable compounds, the "melaneholly idea that one is but eating the funeral baked meats; and pouring out libations of sherry to. the memory of the departed geniality, good fellowship, and general jollity of old Hawke's Bay. It is a very sarcophagus of the old days, and carries a dreary evidence in the dull and dirty paper on the wall, if in nothing else, of the blighting influence of a preponderating and egotistical clique. But for all that: — Never shall my soul forget The friends I found so cordial hearted ; Dear shall be the day we met, And dear shall be the night we parted. The Criterion Hotel just opened is without any exception the most commodious and agreeable place of the kind I have seen in all my travels in this island; and if other public buildings are deficient in man; essential requisites of comfort, and what not, this at least can claim exemption from that stigma. The rooms are large and lofty, and form a most striking contrast to the miserable places called hotels in other parts of the town. What was considered fair accommodation ten years ago, is now altogether intolerable : for the bueh-man of 1860 is now the gentleman squatter, and forms a special class requiring special attention. I was amazed at tho large fortunes realized in Napier within these two or three years. Diggings are nothing to it. Men whom I left as poor as rats, and hardly knowing where to raiai “ a fiver,” are now so rich that they are almost at a loss how to spend their money. Some take themselves back to old England, and many more will go there too. Thus we see that those who make the most money in this country, are those who will spend the least of their gains in the land which has yielded them so abundant a harvest, and are the first to leave, and cast the dust off their shoes at our gates. It is fortunate for those gentlemen that their class is at present “ top sawing,” or they would ha ve some sort of taxation clog put upon their gambols. Upon the whole I may say in concluding this chapter about Napier, that the place altogether has increased and multiplied to an extent in every direction that is just about what might be expected, and which ought to ha ve taken place ten or twelve years ago. There is no excuse, Hawke’s Bay District is, all round, as good as any other place in New Zealand; and but for the party system of law making, and the singularly one sided way of administering lands, she would be the leading Province in the North Island. In my next I shall say something more about Napier and its ways and doings.