I thanked him for his kind offer, which I promised to take into serious consideration, and writing my Auckland address on my card, I asked him to call when he reached town, and I would then be prepared with an answer. He promised to do so, and at that moment the first bell ringing from the dining-room, warned us to get ready for the evening meal.
Having no further business to transact in Cambridge, I took the first train on the following morning for Auckland, which I reached in due course, and spent the evening detailing my adventures to my wife, and in consultation with her as to the best course for us to pursue. It seemed evident we must give up, at any rate for a time, the idea with which we left England, and it was equally clear that in order to live within my income I must buy a place with the few loose hundreds I had brought out, where I could keep a cow or two, and save rent, milk, and butter. I decided, therefore, to look at places that were for sale about Auckland so as to help me to come to a decision before my friend of the Cambridge hotel put in an appearance.
I had looked over one property at Cambridge, which comprised a six-roomed house, and eight acres of land. The house was in very bad condition—quite uninhabitable indeed; and for it and the eight acres I was asked one thousand pounds.
I saw several about Auckland, but could find nothing to suit me. My wife and I took a good many excursions together in this pursuit, but without avail. We also made some pleasure trips, one of which was to Mount Eden, lying directly behind the city. An easy ascent of between three and four hundred feet brought us to the lip of the crater, from which a magnificent view of the isthmus of Auckland and the surrounding country is to be obtained, the great number of volcanic cones visible forming a very remarkable feature in the landscape. They are, I believe, over sixty in number, and range in height from three hundred to nine hundred feet. No tradition exists among the Maoris of any eruption in the neighbourhood, though the fact that the Maori name for the highest peak, Rangitoto, means sky of blood, seems to imply that it has been active within their time.
The inside of the crater of Mount Eden resembles a funnel or inverted cone covered with grass and plentifully strewn with lumps of scoria. It is very symmetrical in shape, and one would almost fancy it an artificial creation. There is indeed plenty of evidence of the work of human hands on Mount Eden in the shape of remains of Maori fortifications, though the natural and the artificial are so blended together and softened by time that it is difficult to say where the one ends and the other begins.
When we had satisfied our appetites for landscape scenery, we descended the Mount, and spent some time examining the neighbourhood in the vain hope of tumbling across a place to be sold that would suit us. We were much struck with the elegant timber villa residences, surrounded by spacious verandahs, about which flowering creeping plants of various kinds, such as the yellow Banksian rose and the passion fruit with its splendid scarlet flower, climbed and hung in luxurious festoons. Some of the villas possessed gardens filled with beautiful flowers, including camelias, azaleas, spirœas, and many others only to be found in conservatories in England. Everywhere in the province of Auckland flowers of all kinds not only grow but flower most luxuriantly, and the lover of floriculture can indulge his hobby to the full.
CHAPTER IX.
A SALE BY AUCTION.