But to return to the North Shore. The beauties of land and sea are here displayed with a lavishness and variety that fairly exceed my powers of description. The houses (many of them exceedingly pretty villas) are all wooden. Bricks are scarce and dear; blue stone of a volcanic origin and more than granite hardness is much used in the larger public buildings in town. There are few gardens, and what there are, are scantily supplied with flowers.
Fruit is abundant all through the North Island. The apples are really fine, grapes are choice, pears exquisite; plums luxuriate; oranges do not thrive; yet tons of fruit are imported from Tasmania, to the exclusion of the home-grown crops. Growers here say it does not pay for carriage to put up the produce of their orchards. Apples in the city are 4d.. or 5d. per lb., and yet in the Waikato district pigs are fed with tons upon tons of the finest varieties. How is this? Is it not a complaint in Sydney also? Dear fruit in the midst of abundance? Here is a problem the solution of which might well attract the philanthropists of our little Pedlingtons. Nay, the question after all is a serious one, and worthy of the best solution the best minds of our community can bring to it. Freights along the coast for one thing are excessive in N.Z. Other means of communication and conveyance are scanty, precarious, and expensive.
Surely co-operation might work some reform. The profits that will alone content the "middle
