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CHAPTER XI.
Bank's Peninsula—Port Lyttelton—The changes of twenty years—A transformation—The great tunnel—The graving work—Christchurch, the city of gardens—Its homelike aspect—Hard times—Colloquy with a croaker—The philosophy of the matter—"The good time coming."
After Wellington, Port Lyttelton is our next halting-place, and memory is busy as it carries me back along the eventful line of twenty-one years since I landed on its steep and stony strand. The view from the steamer is very fine. The snowy mountains are the same. The hazy bulk of Bank's Peninsula looms ahead as if barring our farther progress as it did of yore, but the individual Ego, the I, how different! As the morning mist lifts we see the deep light, beyond which lies the cathedral city, Christchurch. The tall spire is faintly discernible, surrounded by other leafy spires of poplar and pine, and tiny wreaths of blue smoke rising in spiral columns into the grey air of morning. Behind, rise the silvery spurs of the snow-clad Alps. They glitter like burnished armour in the rosy light. The hills and steep braes of the Peninsula are brown and bare, but the snow has a homelike look, and
