From our point of view out in the harbour the city presents a scattered and uneven appearance, that adds to its generally picturesque aspect. As a central feature are the long lines of wharves and quays with their clustering shipping; just beyond these is evidently the densest part of the city. Huge and imposing stone buildings stand thickly here, showing that it is the centre of the business part of Auckland. To right and left the ground rises abruptly and steeply, and the streets become irregular in outline. Nor is the shore a straight and continuous line; these heights on either hand are promontories jutting out into the stream, and hiding deep bays behind them, round which, straggling and irregular, sweeps the city.
The further our eyes travel from the centre of the picture, the more do we lose sight of any trace of uniformity in building. Quite close to the busy parts, so it seems to us, houses stand in their own wide gardens; the streets and roads are lost amid the embowering foliage of trees and shrubs. The house-structures are built on every conceivable plan, up and down the wooded shores; every builder has evidently been his own architect to a great extent, and there is no lack of elbow-room hereaway.
What surprise us most are the evidences of taste and cultivation and general prosperity everywhere in view. Our previous glimpses at the shore of our new country had not prepared us for anything like this. It is decidedly encouraging to new-comers, who are disturbed somewhat by the prospect of doing battle with the wilderness, to find a sort of Anglo-Saxon Naples here in the Southern Sea.
We had an idea that our arrival would have been quite an event in this little place. Nothing of the sort; Aucklanders are too well used to the arrival of emigrant ships. One or two enter the harbour every month, besides other craft; and then the Pacific Mail steamers, large and splendidly equipped vessels, call here twice a month on their way to and fro between Sydney and San Francisco.
There are one or two vessels like ours lying out in the stream at the present time, others are lying alongside the principal wharf, or its cross-tees, amid a forest of spars belonging to small coasting craft. Plenty of shore boats have come off to us on one errand or another; but it is evident that our arrival has not created that impression upon the city which we had had a notion that it would have done.