Those leafy roads of Akaroa, how they call one to go exploring up the gently sloping hillsides above the long main street; how fragrant they are in the time of flowers—which seems to last over a longer period at Akaroa than anywhere else! From these lanes you see giant old pear-trees and walnuts growing in conradely company with the children of the Maori forest. Some of the dwellings in Aylmer's Valley at the southern or “English” end of the town are embowered in grape-vines and climbing roses, and apricot trees are trained along cottage walls. Immense old eucalypts and oaks uplift canopies of green over the footways. There, are hedgerows of alders and hawthorns; the air is laden with the perfume of may, honeysuckle, and roses, of peach and plum tree and the acacia tree of delicious pendulous blossoms. Up one of those lanes, alongside a stream, I saw a bungalow home which seemed to have been cut lately from the kowhai and native fuschia and manuka bush; creeper-twisted light timber grew all about it and its roses and sweet peas, and the hillside rose above in a tangled bit of shady bush.