Picturesque New Zealand/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
New Zealand's Hilly Capital—A Win for American Literature—Hunting an Art Gallery—Welcome and Unwelcome Immigrants—A Polite Conductor—Memories of the Renowned Seddon
The world has many cities built on hills. New Zealand has one that to a great extent is set against hills. This is Wellington, the third and present capital of the Dominion, and, in tonnage entered, its chief port.
A little more than seventy years ago, when the city was founded by the New Zealand Company, Wellington's cramped quarters did not cause it much concern. As the largest colony that up to that time had settled in New Zealand, it was more concerned in building modest homes and disputing land titles with obstinate Maoris. The colonists had just removed to Wellington, after sojourning briefly in Britannia, an unsuitable site for settlement on the opposite side of Port Nicholson, and they had no thought of tunnels and regrades. Later settlers, however, realizing that an increasing population would soon demand access to the hills, filled in a strip along the water front to give them room to swing in while they generated steam for the ascent. Now the most valuable part of the city stands where tides ebbed and flowed, and Wellington is still climbing.
The city reminded me of Seattle. Like the Washington city, the Lambton Harbor port has tunnels, deep cuttings, and steep grades; and some tunnels and more regrades are yet to come. In one respect, that of lofty homes, Wellington surpasses Seattle and closely approaches San Francisco. Some of its residences are nearly seven hundred feet above the sea, and back of the city proper are many unoccupied building sites on higher elevations.
On its gorse- and broom-sprinkled hills of yellow clay and soft brown rock, Wellington's residential quarter occupies a commanding position, yet not from any one point is the whole of it, or of the city, visible. Much of it is hidden in canyons and narrow valleys and by curving hills. Although the city has a certain shut-in appearance, its hills have a charm peculiarly their own. They afford a grandeur of outlook which, though limited, is inspiring. Rising at every point of the compass, they form a mighty amphitheatre, of which the sea is the floor. On their slopes, in city and in pretty suburbs, are many exclusive homes, some standing in new, exposed grounds, others half revealing themselves behind imported trees. The whole effect is brightened with hundreds of red roofs.
In the lower part of the city. Government buildings and massive fronts of banks and hotels make an imposing appearance in an architectural way. With the exception of a part of Lambton Quay, the main business streets are narrow. Indeed, it is this very narrowness which lends impressiveness to many of the principal buildings. These thoroughfares are paved with blocks surfaced with tar and sand or shingle. The residential
 
WELLINGTON WATER FRONT |
streets, which on maps look like fluttering ribbons, so rambling are they, are macadamized. If an earthquake should bring ruin to Wellington,—which, judging by past experiences, is not an improbability,—the people in these straitened commercial streets would have to be very agile to escape falling walls.
In addition to being forced to climb hills every day, and knowing, if he accepts prophecy, that they may fall upon him at any hour, the Wellingtonian frequently has to brace himself against a strong wind. Astonishing to say, the encircling hills give him little protection from gales off the coast.
"I hear that Wellington is a windy place," I said to a man who had lived thirty years in the capital.
"Oh," he replied, "it can blow. I have seen it blow a horse and cart along."
But winds and earthquakes are not enough to quench the spirit of Wellington. It still has the enthusiasm which actuated it in the days of its youth, and which, after many disappointing years, largely enabled it to become the capital in 1864. Because it had a larger European population than any other settlement in the colony, Wellington believed it was entitled to be the seat of the first government of New Zealand. Governor Hobson thought otherwise, and established the capital at Russell, whence, after a short time, he removed it to Auckland, which retained it for more than twenty years.
For convenience the exasperated Port Nicholson settlers established a temporary government of their own in Wellington; but when the sovereignty of Queen Victoria was proclaimed, May 21, 1840, under the Treaty of Waitangi, Governor Hobson by proclamation prohibited the Wellington settlers from conducting any government unrecognized by the Queen. The Wellington residents were not precipitate in complying with the order, and after its publication the captain of a ship was summoned by the colonists' court to answer for an alleged breach of charter. Declining to recognize the court, the mariner was arrested; but he escaped and complained to the Governor.
Immediately a lieutenant and thirty soldiers were dispatched to Wellington with instructions summarily to put down the settlers' government. The lieutenant's task was easy. He was welcomed with cheers, and the settlers, history tells us, "gladly abandoned their own temporary government now that a properly appointed authority was planted among them."
As the seat of government, Wellington contains a large number of public buildings of wood, brick, and stone. Of the Government buildings the most conspicuous are the General Post-Office; the structures separately occupied by the Life Insurance Offices, Printing-Office, Railway Department, Government Departments, Customs Department, and Houses of Parliament; and Government House, the residence of the Governor. The Government Departments Building is said to be the largest wooden structure in the Southern Hemisphere. To these buildings are to be added new houses of Parliament, to replace those destroyed by fire in 1907. All the present State buildings, with the exception of Government House, face on Lambton Quay or adjacent streets; consequently soon after detraining at Thorndon or Lambton, the visitor feels the dominating influence of established authority.
Of the municipal buildings the chief is the town hall, a massive pile with columnar front on Cuba Street. In this building Wellington has one of the finest pipe-organs in Australasia. Some critics say that it surpasses Sydney's more costly municipal organ.
Near the town hall is the public library. Architecturally, it is not particularly impressive, but to Americans it should be an interesting object, for here, in 1911, American literature won the approval of the capital's juvenile readers. American works had for some time been popular with adult patrons of the library, but youthful subscribers were prejudiced against them. Anything American, it seemed, was thought by them to be fustian. At last came a change, and now, to quote a Wellington newspaper, "The cold shoulder and the disdainful eye are no longer turned upon American volumes. A solid inquiry has set in for American literature, and the army of the curious grows daily. The children of Wellington have 'discovered' the Americans, and like them."
Wellington also has an art gallery, but apparently many of its residents had never heard of it when I inquired for it.
"It is a little beyond the library," my first informant assured me.
I went a little beyond that distance, but I saw nothing resembling an art gallery.
"Can you tell me where the art gallery is?" I asked another man.
"No, I'll be blowed if I can," he replied.
I repeated the question to a third man.
"Blest if I can," said he. "I did n't know we had an art gallery."
Then I went to the public library, and appealed to a young woman assistant.
"It is hard to direct you," she laughingly answered. "It is so small; it is a little red brick building with some trees around it."
Finally I found this secluded building, after inquiring the way again of a group of four men, only one of whom was able to direct me. The gallery building was of modest proportions, as I had been told, and the collection was small. But the name was entirely satisfactory. Over the gallery's portals were these words: "New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts."
In Wellington's commercial district are many large buildings, those of four and five stories being common. The most imposing of these, as a whole, are the banks and hotels. Their frontal appearances, however, are not altogether suited to their surroundings. With some of the city's public buildings, they caused me to conclude that Wellington has a heavy face, a face unduly weighted 
with adornments of architecture. In narrow streets the aspect of such buildings, particularly those with gloomy fronts, was not cheerful, and after being in their shade a while I was glad to escape to more open country.
Notwithstanding its cramped quarters, Wellington has a number of recreation grounds and parks of fair size. One of these is Newtown Park, which has the best zoo in New Zealand. On Tinakori Road, a short distance back of the business district, are the Botanical Gardens, where an extensive view of the city is obtainable. Here are wooded dells refreshing in their wild floral profusion, and cool, murmuring waters that sing in forest shades and ripple past flower gardens that delight with their variety.
In Wellington I rode in street-cars owned and operated by its people. On its thirty miles of tram-lines, built at a cost of three million dollars, the city carries more than twenty million passengers annually and realizes a fair interest on the invested capital.
A feature of the Wellington street-car system is the civility of its employees. The most obliging ticket inspector I met in the Dominion was a Wellington tramway employee, and not yet have I encountered a conductor so polite as the one who opened the door of the compartment in which I was sitting, and saying, "Thank you," shut it without having entered, or collected a fare. What did that "Thank you" mean? No one had given its speaker anything or done him a service. On inquiry, I learned that he was merely looking for unpaid fares, and that his thanks meant he was satisfied everybody in the compartment had paid!
As in its pioneer days, Wellington is the chief immigration port of New Zealand. In its fine harbor large steamships frequently anchor with from five hundred to six hundred immigrants from Great Britain, many of whom are "nominated" and "assisted." Since 1904 residents of New Zealand have had the privilege of nominating domestic servants and agriculturists for reduced passages from England to the Dominion. All persons granted such passages are booked to leave London in time to reach New Zealand in the spring or summer. Under this system passengers get a reduction of from ten to fifty-five dollars each in fares. The most favored of all such immigrants are female domestic servants. In six-berth cabins these have to pay only fourteen dollars for this voyage of twelve thousand miles.
Nominations are accepted by the New Zealand Government only on the understanding that residents or relatives will be responsible for the nominee on arrival in New Zealand. Since 1904 more than twenty thousand immigrants have been assisted.
These arrivals find a welcome in New Zealand, but there are other arrivals who do not. Between the ruddy farmhands and domestics of the United Kingdom and the yellow men of China there is a wide difference. One class is practically paid to enter New Zealand; the other must pay, and pay heavily, for that privilege. Once Chinese were permitted to enter the country for fifty dollars per head; since 1896 they have had to pay five hundred dollars each. And since late in 1908 each Chinese immigrant has been required to read a printed passage of not less than one hundred English words.
In New Zealand's capital one of the most impressive objects is the lofty monument raised to the memory of Richard John Seddon, who did so much to elevate the Dominion to its present position. The memorial is a granite shaft surmounted by a bronze female figure typifying political fame. It is dedicated to the dead statesman by Parliament and the people of New Zealand, and on it is written:—
"In him the most lofty qualities of an eminent Imperial statesman were united with wide human sympathies and warm affections of the heart."
For thirteen years "Digger Dick," once from the gold-fields of Westland, was Prime Minister of "God's Own Country," as he loved to call it. He died in Australian waters on June 10, 1906, his end being hastened by overwork.
Mr. Seddon rose from humble ranks to the highest political position it was possible for him to win in New Zealand, yet never at any time or at any place was he ashamed to acknowledge his lowliest friends.
"I saw Dick walk up the street with a man that even I would have been ashamed to be seen with," said a Wellington laboring-man to me. "The bloke did n't have a decent pair of boots on; but that did n't make any difference to Seddon."
"Ah, when we lost Seddon we lost the father of our country," lamented the secretary of a labor union to me. "We laboring-men depended upon Dick Seddon. He made his mistakes and he had his faults: but when he did make mistakes, we said: 'Oh, well, Seddon has our welfare at heart.'"