Napier Town and Scinde Island.

Quite unlike any other New Zealand town, Napier is sharply divided into business and residential areas by the natural configuration of the ground. Boldly defined by steep slants and perpendicular cliffs, the long mass of limestone known as Scinde Island rises high above the far-extending plain that is elevated only a few feet above the ocean. “Island” is almost literally correct.

From a few miles away, especially if one is looking from a vessel at sea, it looks as if it were entirely insulated from the mainland. A few hundred years ago, no doubt, it was islanded completely. Observations during the few generations we have been in New Zealand have shown that, speaking broadly, the tilting of the land has—sometimes in sharp spasmodic upheavals—slightly raised the east coast while the west coast has suffered erosion and depression. Certainly page 29 as one stands on any part of Scinde Island where an unobstructed view is obtained, the impression of a natural fortress, a kind of island refuge, is strong; and strong also the impression that the slightest tilting of the land in the wrong direction would send the salt sea rolling for miles over the towns and farms of Hawke's Bay. The earthquake of last year, though so great a disaster in the destruction it caused, at least did the neighbourhood of Napier the service of unwater-ing some of the lagoons and long shallow reaches, which will gradually be put to profitable use.

“Where the gorge, like a gateway, Opens a passage to the wheels of commerce.“
(Rly. Publicity Photo.) The famous Manawatu Gorge through which entry to Hawke's Bay is made from the west.

One terminal of Scinde Island goes down in steep slopes, furrowed with gullies, just above the business area of the town; the other abuts in lofty vertical cliffs on the north and north-east, looming like a huge bastion above the entrance to the inner harbour and the ocean break-water where the steamers lie. The high-land, green everywhere, stands out in high contrast to the crowded levels of the town. Covered with orchards and gardens, and fine old groves of trees, with hundreds of pretty homes all among them, flowers and foliage, it is under normal conditions the pleasantest of residential areas. As in many islands, an exploration reveals it as a much larger place than a first view from the town below would give one to believe; it is so cut up and varied in contour by little dells and all kinds of unexpected twists and turns in the valleys. Wind-swept on the high Bluff end—the Hukarere or “Flying Spray” cliff of the Maoris—it is sheltered and mild of air in the sunny hollows and the tree-palisaded gardens.

Sweet old homes and modern bungalows peep out from the foliage. The older dwellings are often of the long low rambling character half-hidden among the grand trees that were planted sixty or seventy years ago. There are miles of beautiful leafy lane-like walks, inviting a stroll, and every here and there vistas of sparkling ocean or long vari-coloured plain and remote blue serrated ranges. The roads from the town are steep, winding through passes below cliffy places where houses are in some cases perched too precariously against the hillsides, but once the top of the island is gained there are quite long stretches of fairly level ground. Some of the earliest families of Hawke's Bay have their time-mellowed page 30 dwellings in lawns and gardens of generous areas two hundred feet and more above the town.

The route up Milton Road and along the island-top to the Botanical Gardens and the hospital is about as inviting a path as any for the visitor. Even the cemetery seems as much of a park as the public gardens, which it adjoins, it is so adorned with trees and flowers; it looks out to the south over town

“Slowly moves the harmless race, Spreading their treasures to the sunny ray.”—James Thomson.
(Rly. Publicity Photo.) A picturesque rural scene, Maraekakaho sheep station in sunny Hawke's Bay.

and rivers and great pastures; it is bathed in the long sunshine of the coast, and its bushes and coppices ring with bird song. A burying-ground of history and beauty. Here rest many of the pioneers and Maori War leaders. A tall Celtic Cross of Iona Isle's St. Columba pattern is reared above three generations of that first of Napier families, the Macleans. One reads the names, too, of Sir George Whitmore, Captain St. George (killed at Te Porere, Tonga-riro, in 1869), the Rev. William Colenso, and other men whose life stories live in our history. Then the hospital, next to the gardens; it is set in the loveliest surroundings any New Zealand hospital enjoys.