CHRISTCHURCH
Why cricket should lag so far behind football seems at first sight puzzling; for few countries would seem better suited to the most scientific of out-door games than the east and centre of New Zealand, with their sunny but not tropical climate, and their fresh sward of good green grass. Two reasons, probably, account for the disparity. To begin with, cricket, at any rate first-class cricket, takes up far more time than football. Its matches last for days; even practice at the nets consumes hours. Athletics in New Zealand are the exercise and recreation of men who have to work for a livelihood. The idle amateur and the trained professional are equally rare: you see neither the professional who plays to live, nor the gentleman who lives to play. The shorter hours of the ordinary working day, helped by the longer measure of daylight allowed by nature, enable a much larger class than in England to give a limited amount of time to athletics. But the time is limited, and first-class cricket therefore, with its heavy demands on the attention of its votaries, suffers accordingly. Cricket, again, is a summer game, and in summer the middle or poorer classes have a far larger variety of amusements to turn to than in winter. Sailing, rowing, cycling, lawn tennis, fishing, picnics by the sea or in the forest, mountain-climbing, and tramps in the wilderness, all compete with cricket to a much greater degree than with football. Indeed the horse and the gun are well-nigh the only dangerous rivals that football has, and they are confined to a much more limited class. So while New Zealand stands at the head of the list of countries that play the Rugby game, our cricketers could at the best furnish an eleven able to play a moderately strong English county. The game does, indeed, make headway, but is eclipsed both by the pre-eminent local success of football, and by the triumphs of cricket in Australia and South Africa. Meanwhile, cricket matches in New Zealand, if not Olympian contests, are at any rate pleasant games. One is not sure whether the less strenuous sort of cricket, when played in bright weather among surroundings where good-fellowship and sociability take the place of the excitement of yelling thousands, is not, after all, the better side of a noble game.
CANOE HURDLE RACE
WAIHI BAY, WHANGAROA HARBOUR
As rowing men know, New Zealand has produced more than one sculler of repute, and at this moment Webb, of the Wanganui River, holds the title of champion of the world. With this development of sculling, there is a curiously contrasted lack of especial excellence in other forms of rowing. Indeed one is inclined to predict that aquatic skill in the islands will, in days to come, display itself rather in sailing. The South Pacific is an unquiet ocean, and long stretches of our coast are iron-bound cliffs or monotonous beaches. But to say nothing of half-a-hundred large lakes, there are at least three coastal regions which seem made for yachting. The most striking of these, but one better adapted for steam yachts than for sailing or small open craft, is at the butt-end of the South Island, and includes the fiords of the south-west coast and the harbours of eastern Stewart Island. Between the two Bluff Harbour lies handy as the yachtsman’s headquarters. The second of the three chief yachting grounds of the colony has been placed by nature on the southern side of Cook’s Strait among a multitude of channels, islands, and sheltered bays, accessible alike from Wellington, Nelson, or Picton, and affording a delightful change and refuge from bleak, wind-smitten Cook’s Strait. The best, because the most easily enjoyed of the three, is the Hauraki Gulf, studded with islands, fringed with pleasant beaches and inviting coves, and commanded by the most convenient of harbours in the shape of the Waitemata. Nor, charming and spacious as the gulf is, need the Auckland yachtsmen limit themselves to it. Unless entirely wedded to smooth water, they can run northward past the Little Barrier Island and visit that fine succession of beautiful inlets, Whangarei, the Bay of Islands, and Whangaroa. All lie within easy reach, and all are so extensive and so picturesquely diversified with cliffs, spurs, bays, and islets, that any yachtsman able to navigate a cutter with reasonable skill should ask for nothing better than a summer cruise to and about them.