Many Makeshifts Are
Necessary; A Broken Rail Or Gate Is Mended With A Piece Of Flax, So,
Occasionally, Are The Roads.
I have seen the Government roads
themselves being repaired with no other material than stiff tussocks of
grass, flax, and rushes:
This is bad, but to a certain extent
necessary, where there is so much to be done and so few hands and so
little money with which to do it.
After getting off the completed portion of the road, the track commences
along the plains unassisted by the hand of man. Before one, and behind
one, and on either hand, waves the yellow tussock upon the stony plain,
interminably monotonous. On the left, as you go southward, lies Banks
Peninsula, a system of submarine volcanoes culminating in a flattened
dome, little more than 3000 feet high. Cook called it Banks Island,
either because it was an island in his day, or because no one, to look
at it, would imagine that it was anything else. Most probably the
latter is the true reason; though, as the land is being raised by
earthquakes, it is just possible that the peninsula may have been an
island in Cook's days, for the foot of the peninsula is very little
above the sea-level. It is indeed true that the harbour of Wellington
has been raised some feet since the foundation of the settlement, but
the opinion here is general that it must have been many centuries since
the peninsula was an island.
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