The cricket-ground, on the following day, was again the scene of an enormous gathering. Eight thousand children were here assembled and went through pretty evolutions and drill. In the terminal figure some two thousand little girls, attired respectively in red, white and blue frocks, so grouped themselves as to form, first the word "Welcome," and afterwards the Union Jack, which waved and rustled as the children bent and swayed to time given by a mite mounted on an eight-foot stool in front. The crowd which surrounded the enclosure, on this occasion, was estimated at thirty thousand.
From Auckland the Prince went south on a train, every part of which, from the engine to the brake-van, had been built in New Zealand workshops.
The first thing one realizes starting for anywhere in New Zealand is the thing that has been a geography wonder since the age of nine, the queer inversion of the climate. The experience is curious, notwithstanding all one's submission to the fact since that time, so potent a governor of associations is a little word. We had arrived at the North Island, where the climate was warm and sunny like that of Italy. People coming with more permanent intentions had a way of settling in the South Island to be under home conditions of temperature, many of them gradually moving across the Strait to the North Island in pursuit of balmier airs. We saw the late autumn apples of April here and there ungathered on the trees about Auckland, and were grateful to escape the imaginative dislocation of a midsummer Christmas, with sunstroke as the punishment of over-indulgence. It would be interesting to know in what period of residence New Zealand undertakes to change one's dreams.
A green, rolling land, homely turnip fields, orchards, pasture containing fine cattle and sheep, pleasant, red-roofed farm-houses, comfortable country residences, and thriving market towns at frequent intervals, sped past the train. At Ngaruawahia, two thousand brown-faced, high-cheekboned Maoris, in European dress, greeted the Prince from outside the railway fence, men, women and children, hand in hand, repeatedly bowing to the ground, to slow rhythmic soft-voiced singing, as the train steamed by. At the same time, a dozen pretty Maori girls, in flowing white frocks, bare feet, and raven masses of waving fillet-bound hair, swayed, undulated and step-danced upon a mat upon the side of the track. These folk were Maori, as often as not, by courtesy rather than by strict racial description. Few pure-bred Maoris indeed are now to be found in New Zealand, and it is said that the mixture of brown and white is here more successful than anywhere else in the world. At all events one received the impression of a people plastic to the print of a new civilization, and developing happily in it.