page 50

The World'S Newest City.

(Continued from page 15 )

little cities, is unique. But these people do not leave the situation there. They are ceaselessly and intelligently working to make Napier an ideal New Zealand centre. I have said nothing, so far, of those amenities whose standard everywhere in New Zealand, leads the world. Deep drainage, electric light, four modern cinemas, paved streets, telephones, ample water supply, and all other aids to the comfort of living exist here. Fishing and shooting are handy. There are countless tennis courts, croquet lawns, and good recreation grounds of various sorts. There are two good golf courses, the nearest of which we show in the picture. The Maraenui Club is less than three miles from the town, and its green fees are 2/- a round or 10/- weekly. Here is an instance of the devotion of the towns-folk of Napier. This was an ugly swamp area a few years ago, and today it has a comfortable golf house, smooth, wide fairways, and eighteen interesting holes. From its putting green, there is a radiant far picture of the “minarets of snow” on the distant ranges.

The hotels are, of course, excellent, and being entirely new, are the last word in up-to-dateness. I always enquire at the bookshops of a place to get a line on its cultural ideas, and discovered that Napier absorbed a remarkable number of the good English literary weeklies and high-class magazines. I attended a meeting of the Napier Society of Musicians, and it might have been a London show. Blythe's restaurant room, in which it was held, is genuinely beautiful, in keeping with the rest of this fashionable twentieth century emporium, and the crowd to my eye made a restful, albeit smart picture of good frocking and correct evening male wear.

Napier is “on the way.” Its period of reconstruction is over. It is marching now to be a Riviera resort. Be reminded that its newborn beauty of buildings, its modernity of street line and civic planning, are set in a base of age-old natural loveliness, and an arbour of garden sweetness that only time can perfect.

I look forward confidently to the day when, among its tens of thousands of annual visitors, there will be only an occasional one who even remembers that dark day in its history. I noticed already that organisations of professions and businesses are starting to find that their deliberations would be most efficient if held in Napier. That is a sign pointing the way.