Only a mile from the town is the port and the open sea, and by the sand dunes of a wide bay cottages are being built by the people of Nelson, and here they come and picnic, and enjoy sea bathing and golf and wonderful views across the bay, of snowy mountains and blue hills. The hills have as foreground a wide stretch of open country, neither hilly nor flat, but crumpled into little ridges running in all directions. This crumpled land is the district of Moutere, and here it has recently been discovered that apples grow better than they do anywhere else in the neighbourhood, so all who have land there are turning it to account for apple orchards.
The great excitement of the place just then was the visit to the port of H.M.S. "New Zealand."
Hundreds of people went aboard and were shown the ship and many of her treasures—such as signed portraits of the King and Queen, hanging on either side of a glass case containing presents given to the ship—silver gilt cups, massive branched candlesticks and Maori curios; portraits too of Dick Seddon and Sir Joseph Ward.
Officers and men were entertained in the town, and the sailors gave exhibitions of naval drill and sports in a large paddock near the port.
June 3rd, the King's birthday, is observed through the Dominion as a general holiday.
It was winter certainly, but the sun shone and the air was mild, and friends took me out picnicing. First we drove three miles in an open carriage to a reservoir on the outskirts of the town, from there a steep track took us into the bush, and by a trickling stream we piled up sticks and boiled the billy, and then sat down for tea on a mossy bank overlooking a wooded ravine. It was all very pleasant and a little unexpected at that time of year, but other picnic parties were doing the same.
From Nelson steamers run to Wellington.
Nelson is situated at the north of South Island, and Wellington at the extreme southern point of North Island, but between the two places lie many miles of coastline, and the voyage takes several hours—from early morning until late at night, if as on the day when I crossed Cook Strait, the steamer calls in at Picton. Between Nelson and Picton the land shows a very curious geological formation—a flat tableland cut through by deep gorges up which the sea flows in long curving arms, and all the arms or "sounds" are indented with numberless bays, large and small, and off the coast and within the sounds are many rocky, tree-clad islands.
At the entrance to Pelorus Sound the boats have for many years been met by a white dolphin—Pelorus Jack—who always escorted them up to Picton. Jack was specially protected by Act of Parliament, but for over a year nothing has been seen of him, and his old friends fear that he is dead.
The steamer hugs the coast and you admire the high cliffs and forests and the waterways that separate them. We turned up Queen Charlotte Sound—a narrow entrance and then a long landlocked harbour, up which it took two hours to steam. On either side were high bush hills, cleared in places for grass; round us played a large shoal of porpoises, the great creatures often jumping right out of the water close to the ship, while all the time grey gulls circled gracefully round and round.