having been gone through, comes the parting with
shipmates and the confusion of landing.

It is not without a strong feeling of astonishment that we step out of
the boat that has brought us off, and enter the city. We were totally
unprepared for the scene before us. From the accounts we had read and
received, we had pictured Auckland to our minds as little better than a
collection of log-huts, with here and there, perhaps, a slightly more
comfortable frame-house. And here is the reality. A city that would put
to shame many an old English town. A main street--Queen Street--that
might even compare favourably with many a leading London thoroughfare in
all its details. Fine handsome edifices of stone, with elaborate
architecture and finish; large plate-glass shop-windows, filled with a
display of wares; gas-lamps, pillar letter-boxes, pavements, awnings,
carts, carriages, and cabs; all the necessities, luxuries, and
appurtenances of city life, civilized and complete.

Truly, all this is a wonderful surprise to us. Our preconceived ideas,
gathered from various books dating only a few years back, had led our
fancies completely astray. Learning from these sources that, not much
more than thirty years ago--in 1840,--the first ship-load of British
emigrants landed in New Zealand; that since then the colony had
struggled for bare life against many and great difficulties; that it had
had to wage several desperate wars with the aborigines; had had its
financial and legislative troubles; and was still so very very young, we
were naturally prepared to find Auckland a rude, rough, and inchoate
settlement, pitched down in the midst of a wilderness as savage and
uncouth as those shores we passed along yesterday.

We know that a very few years ago, Auckland really was but what we had
fancied it still would be, and so we comprehend now how little the
people at home actually realize of the conditions of life at their
Antipodes. Moreover, as we pass along the streets of this British city,
set down here on the shaggy shores of Britain's under-world, in the very
heart of recent Maori-dom, so remote and far removed from the tracks of
ancient civilization, we look around us and are filled with wonder and a
feeling akin to awe. This is what colonization means; this is the work
of colonists; this is the evidence of energy that may well seem titanic,
of industry that appears herculean; this is Progress! The thought
thrills us through and through