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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

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X.

Wellington,

New Zealand strikes a visitor from the Old World as new indeed. I have long ago got used to understand that when a house is said to be "very old" it is meant at the most that it is nearly as old as I am myself—not quite, for when I was born there were no buildings at Auckland and Wellington except the wooden shanties page 130 on the shore, which have long since given place to fine and substantial warehouses and offices, while Dunedin and Christchurch were as yet not thought of. But it is not only the constructions of our race which are so recent, the very land itself is new as compared with the countries we have been before familiar with. I am no geologist, but I must be blind not to see the glacier's course marked by terminal and lateral moraines, as if it had retreated but a few years ago from the valleys now filled with deep lakes and bordered by sheep pastures. The signs of volcanic action are written large on promontory and sound, and the hot springs and geysers show how the force is not yet spent, and warn too-confident dwellers in yet unfinished territory that the eruption of 1889, which destroyed the famous Pink Terraces, will not be the last of its kind. Then the marks of elevation and subsidence of the coast are to be noted even in the streets, and it is not half a century ago that a benevolent earthquake enlarged the too-restricted area for the expansion of Wellington, and turned what had been and is still by name its Quay into a road a hundred yards back from the beach, from which it is now blocked out by numerous business premises; at the same time, it converted the pool reserved for a dock into dry ground, still known as the Basin, but used for cricket. The very coal we are burning tells the same story of newness, for it is a true lignite, and needs a hundred thousand years more to turn it into genuine coal.

Wellington has chosen for its motto "Suprema a situ," referring to the choice of it, though inferior in page 131 population to the three other cities of New Zealand, for the seat of government. It has been made "supreme because of its situation," being as nearly central as could be found. But to me it seems that a proud citizen might well attach a nobler claim to the words, and make it his boast that Wellington was supreme among the cities of the colony, second only to Sydney among those of the Southern Hemisphere, by reason of its magnificent position on the ocean and in the midst of the mountains, sheltered from storms and enjoying a sea tamed to be her servant. Indeed, its port has a commerce larger than that of Bristol, and room to shelter the navy of Great Britain.

I climbed to-day the western hills which bound the city. For two hours I walked along the high ridge overlooking crowded streets and busy quays below without meeting a fellow creature. Beneath my feet was grass grown from English seed; above my head sang the lark descended from English parents. Cows and horses of the Old Country stock grazed around. Homes of the moderately rich and the comfortably poor were visible on every hill slope far and near. The view was wide, but of the primaeval bush which only half a century ago clothed it all from shore to hill-top there was nothing left save here and there a scanty remnant, thinned for firewood and invaded by sturdier trees from northern lands.

It was easy to reconstruct the scene as Captain Cook, first of white men, beheld it in 1770, the same as it appeared to the first settlers in 1840. For the main features are, of course, unchanged; and except page 132 for the destruction of the bush by fire and axe so converting the hill-slopes to fertile pastures, it is little that civilised men have done or could do to make or mar the prospect. To the south the Pacific becomes visible, on the left stretching uninterrupted to the Antarctic Circle, on the right bounded by the mountains of the Middle Island. A narrow channel connects the ocean with the great inland harbour, a basin among the hills some six miles in length by four in breadth; at this end so deep that large vessels moor to the wharf close to the warehouses; away to the north, silted up by the mud brought down from the high and now snow-clad hills of the interior, which has formed a fertile plain. Here and there along the shore in old time the Maoris had made a clearing and built a "pa," or stockaded village. Two stood where Wellington is now built, and the old names have been kept in the city nomenclature. But the land was then covered with forest impenetrable except for the narrow paths cut by the natives, like Britain as Julius Cæsar found it two thousand years ago, and its tattooed warriors and priests in just the same early stage of civilisation.

And my life-time—and I am not yet a Methuselah—has effected here all the change between modern England and ancient Britain, so that to-day New Zealand is in no respect behind the foremost of mankind in the arts of civilised life, and in some respects ahead of all the world.

As for religion, there is the fullest liberty, nor have I discovered any sign of the bigotry or exclusiveness page 133 which is so common at home. There is no Established Church, possessed, as at home, of ancient endowments and privileges, and maintaining its ex-elusive right to the magnificent edifices which are a nation's pride. All are on a level as respects religion, brought up in the same unsectarian schools, and unused to the distinction of "church" and "chapel," "clergyman" and "minister," which help to perpetuate religious dissension in England.

As your readers know, there is only one Unitarian congregation in New Zealand, and that though flourishing and soon to be independent, of quite recent growth. But assuredly there are numerous Unitarians. The difficulty is to get them to know themselves and come together and recognise the benefit of united worship.

At Christchurch I could do nothing. It is the Athens of Australasia, and its people are ever ready to "hear some new thing." I believe I should have fared better if only the faith I preached had not been so old, if I had come with some new revelation or new interpretation of old Scriptures. But Unitarianism is not without its witnesses even there, and it is of small consequence that they "follow not with us." I had good audiences at the two lectures I gave, although the weather was very unfavourable; and there, as everywhere, I have been met with the friendliest reception.

Here the case is very different. The Richmonds and the Atkinsons, families had in honour for their virtues and their talents and the high places which page 134 their members have held in the government of the colony, came here in the early days with Unitarian associations and memories which they have never let go. I am told that Judge Richmond, a lawyer who was known and esteemed in England as well as here, conducted services regularly in his own house, but would not admit others than members of the family, as he shrank from seeming to put himself forward as a minister. Besides these there are others who have brought the name with the faith from the old home, and have brought up their children in it. They have had no choice but either to join in religious worship more or less repellent to their sentiments, as most of them have done hitherto, or to give up public worship altogether. Now, for the first time, Unitarian services have been offered to them, and they have availed themselves of the offer in a way which shows that a regular ministry, if such could be provided, would here be useful and acceptable. On Sunday last, the third which I spent in Wellington, I had about 40 at morning service, of whom 26 were men, and about 60 in the evening, which was wet. There is a ready-made choir and more than one efficient pianist. Last night we had a meeting of sympathisers and supporters, and passed a resolution to form a Unitarian Society, to which over fifty have since given in their names. It was also arranged to make a beginning by holding a public service on the first evening of each month. Altogether, the prospects are decidedly hopeful. The greatest difficulty will be to find the right man.

C. H.