However, to return to our ship. As soon as she anchored off the floating magazine to discharge her gunpowder, before coming alongside the wharf, I looked about for a means of getting ashore, and was lucky enough to have a passage offered me in the steam launch which had brought the health officer on board.
My mind was too bent on discovering house-room for my family, to think much of anything else, though I must confess I was not impressed with my first view of Auckland. I walked up the main street and opened negotiations with some of the principal hotels, but these proving too expensive for my pocket, I wandered about hoping to come across a house with the familiar card "Apartments to let" displayed in the window. After a considerable wear of boot leather and temper without any satisfactory result, I entered a small hotel (by the way, every beer shop in New Zealand is an hotel) and besought information combined with a glass of ale and a biscuit.
Having ascertained the whereabouts of what I was assured was a _most_ respectable boarding-house, I set out for the place, and presently found myself opposite to a wooden structure in H---- Street, which seemed to my unaccustomed eyes to be a cross between an undersized barn and a gipsy's caravan.
With hesitating hand I lifted the knocker, and my feeble rat-tap was after a considerable lapse of time responded to by a female of doubtful age, and still more doubtful appearance. To this lady--they are all ladies in New Zealand--I told my wants, and was graciously informed that she would undertake to accommodate my whole family for six pounds per week,--which, by the way, was about one half the sum demanded by the most moderate of the hotels. With a feeling of relief at the prospect of getting suitable quarters at last, in reply to her invitation I entered the house.
"This is where they has their meals," said my guide, with evident pride, as she opened a door on her left and disclosed a room looking for all the world like a skittle alley of unusually wide dimensions, with a long table down the middle of it. Not a vestige of carpet was there on the floor, which was far from clean, and sloped towards one corner. On both sides of the table were ranged a number of kitchen chairs, and these, with a sideboard bearing a strong resemblance to a varnished packing-case on end, completed the furniture.