Aspect of Port Lyttelton--Ascent of Hill behind it--View--Christ Church--Yankeeisms--Return to Port Lyttelton and Ship--Phormium Tenax--Visit to a Farm--Moa Bones.
January 27,1860.--Oh,the heat!the clear transparent atmosphere,and the dust!How shall I describe everything--the little townlet,for Icannot call it town,nestling beneath the bare hills that we had been looking at so longingly all the morning--the scattered wooden boxes of houses,with ragged roods of scrubby ground between them--the tussocks of brown grass--the huge wide-leafed flax,with its now seedy stem,sometimes 15or 16feet high,luxuriant and tropical-looking--the healthy clear-complexioned men,shaggy-bearded,rowdy-hatted,and independent,pictures of rude health and strength--the stores,supplying all heterogeneous commodities--the mountains,rising right behind the harbour to a height of over a thousand feet--the varied outline of the harbour now smooth and sleeping.Ah me!pleasant sight and fresh to sea-stricken eyes.The hot air,too,was very welcome after our long chill.
We dined at the table d'hote at the Mitre--so foreign and yet so English--the windows open to the ground,looking upon the lovely harbour.Hither come more of the shaggy clear-complexioned men with the rowdy hats;looked at them with awe and befitting respect.Much grieved to find beer sixpence a glass.This was indeed serious,and was one of the first intimations which we received that we were in a land where money flies like wild-fire.