FIJI-NEW ZEALAND EXPEDITION 239 
which with its modern looking wooden houses spread over a rela- 
tively flat plain resembles a town in our mid-western states. We 
began to climb a hillside dotted with picturesque houses, set in 
groups in the valleys and cozy nooks of the hill-side. As we 
climbed still higher the range of southern Alps with their snowy 
peaks loomed far off on the western horizon. They were perhaps 
fifty miles distant across the great Canterbury Plains, one of the 
richest agricultural regions in New Zealand, stretching away until 
they appeared blue like the ocean in the far distance. Near at 
hand and directly before us as we looked back over the route by 
which we came, the whole of Christchurch was spread out, giving 
a wonderful bird’s-eye view of the plan of the city with its regu- 
lar streets breaking it up into squares like those of a checker- 
board. The contrast between the regularity of this city and the 
maze of irregular streets in Auckland and Wellington could hard- 
ly be more striking, illustrating as it does the effect of topography 
on the building plan. 
Christchurch is by no means as picturesque as either of the 
other cities visited but it is certainly much more convenient. There 
is no natural limit to its growth as there is in the case of Welling- 
ton, surrounded by high hills, many of which are quite rugged 
and abrupt. Christchurch does not lack picturesque sites for sub- 
urban homes, however, for the snug little valleys, ravines and 
rounded hills on the slope of one of which we stood, furnish in- 
numerable places for houses high enough to escape the heat in 
summer, and command exquisite vistas of city, plain and the 
majesty of distant snow-clad peaks. The scene must be lovely in 
summer when the farms are green with growing crops. We 
walked along a good road of easy grade with patches of fir trees 
here and there, and the yellow bloom of gorse splotching the hills 
gave a lively bit of color to relieve the grays and dull olive of the 
hills. The gorse, by the way, is a noxious weed in parts of New 
Zealand and is regarded with about as much affection as the 
dandelion is with us. The hills have few trees and are largely 
clothed with thick tussocks of tall grass which furnish excellent 
pasturage for sheep. In one valley were hundreds of rabbit bur- 
rows, and these pestiferous rodents are as great a nuisance here 
as in Australia, but are coming fairly under control in the more 
densely populated districts. 
Presently we came to the top of a divide and could look over 
into a part of Lyttelton harbor, but the town itself could not be 
