CHAPTER XIV 
A TRIP TO CHRISTCHURCH 
On the evening of August 3 I took the ferry to Christchurch, 
South Island, a twelve hour run. The boat was fairly comfortable 
but much crowded on account of race week. I talked with a man 
who had been through the Gallipoli Campaign, who said that their 
most terrible experience was caused by the countless swarms of 
flies, getting into one’s eyes, ears, nose and mouth and taken with 
almost every mouthful of food. He believed that the Anzacs had 
been forced to undertake an absolutely impossible thing; that the 
Turkish defensive positions were actually impregnable without 
heavy artillery and that Australian and New Zealand men were 
needlessly sacrificed. 
I slept fairly well in spite of a rough sea and the vociferous 
sea-sickness of several of my neighbors. 
It was bitterly cold on deck in the morning in spite of the 
brilliant sunshine. The long range of the Southern Alps stretched 
along the entire western horizon, more deeply and completely 
buried in dazzling white snow than any other mountains I have 
seen; the wind sweeping down from those masses of snow and ice 
chilled one to the very bone. 
A good and abundant breakfast was served on board. There is 
a frank friendliness about these Colonials in sharp contrast to the 
frigidity of the Englishman and his reluctance to make acquaint- 
ance with strangers, and there is much less formality than with 
us under similar circumstances. 
We reached Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch, about ten 
o’clock in the morning. Our train was waiting on the wharf, but 
was so crowded that I was unable to secure a seat and had to 
stand up all the way. It seems that the law against over-crowding 
passenger cars is not enforced during race week. The trip was 
only about twenty minutes long, however. Shortly after starting 
we passed through a fairly large tunnel in which the coal smoke 
from the engine was actually stifling. We emerged into a flat 
country, the Canterbury Plains, extending for 150 miles between 
the mountains and the coast, probably the largest uninterrupted 
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