Most of the shops were faced with verandas, extending quite across the sidewalk. These verandas were all different in design, helping to make the buildings appear very unsymmetrical.
A great problem for the stranger in Auckland is to discover why so many baggage-carts, which are called ‘expresses,’ stand the whole day long in certain parts of the town.
In Victoria Street, which commences as a long hill, you see these carts standing, one behind the other, in a line too long for the eye to carry you to the end of it. I discovered that the secret lay in their charges, for if you engage one of them, the driver will make enough money to keep him for the next week.
The meat-shops were pointed out to me as a speciality, but, as I have said before, I dislike exhibitions of dead bodies. Certainly one of the shops was beautifully decorated, and all the lambs and other creatures, which were hung up by their hind-legs, were ornamented with rosettes and bouquets. These additions possibly toned down the appearance of the shambles, but they looked as much out of place as a blue ribbon does round the neck of a statue.
To me a butcher’s shop is as pleasing as a dissecting-room or a morgue.
With a little training we shall have public windows in which to exhibit the operations of the slaughterhouse. Butchers’ shops ought to have screens before them.
Besides the shops there were the theatres, public gardens, an embryonic University, and a Museum to be seen. At the Museum there was the usual collection of Maori productions, implements, and weapons, mineralogical and geological specimens, a good collection of pictures, and, not to do the place an injustice, a little moa.
‘A little moa what?’ said Mac.
This was the second time he made his moa joke, so I remained silent.
I gazed at the rusty-looking little animal for some time, for I knew it might be years before I should again have the opportunity of interviewing this extinct giant of the feathered world.