At your feet, sheep feed on the short, sweet grass; and here and there in the gullies are still trees and ferns, reminders of days gone by.
The Dominion Parliament meets at Wellington in a wooden building that was until recently Government House; and the House of Representatives sits in the old ballroom, to which visitors are admitted by ticket. I went twice to hear the debate.
The Speaker's Chair is a small throne cushioned in crimson velvet, set under a carved canopy of polished brown wood; on the right sat Mr. Massey and the members of the Government; on the left, Sir Joseph Ward and the Opposition. There are galleries at either end, one for reporters, the other for strangers and members of the Upper House; and round the room was set a row of chairs for members' wives. The Mace was on a table in front of the Speaker's Chair.
The whole building is far too small, and will soon be replaced by a larger and grander house, of which the foundations have already been laid close to the present one.
Near the Houses of Parliament is the Museum, a small wooden building, in which there is very little room adequately to display all the treasures, and some have to be packed away and not shown at all.
The chief treasure is a Maori house--not a house for living in, but one in which the Maoris used to hold councils--a native Town Hall. It is a long, narrow house of one room, with a high-pitched, sloping roof, and it had originally one door and one window, both side by side at one of the narrow ends. Ranged against the two long walls are grotesque, carved, wooden figures of ancestors of the tribe of Maoris by whom the house was made--these figures are carved out of blocks of dull, red wood, and are three to four feet high; pieces of glittering blue and green shell are fastened in for eyes, and all the figures are ornamented very effectively with circular patterns in chip carving; there are sixteen figures on either side, and other figures again at both ends. The wall space between each figure should be filled in with reeds set close together, and crossed by narrow strips of wood fastened by thin bands of flax; in this house at Wellington, the reeds have all been replaced by wood, fluted, and painted a pale yellow; the ancestral figures too have been raised some way above the floor. Originally the walls were only the same height as the figures, and the roof sloped from the ridge-pole to the carved heads. The Maoris used to squat on the ground at their assemblies, so they did not need great height in their council halls.