BAT OF ISLANDS AND NEW ZEALAND COAST. 311 



anchor. Not a bit of it. The whole place seemed a 

 maritime sleepy hollow, the dwellers in which had lost 

 all interest in life, and had become far less energetic 

 than the much-maligned Kanakas in their dreamy isles 

 of summer. 



Yet this was once intended for the capital of New 

 Zealand. When the large and splendidly-built city of 

 Dunedin, Otago, was a barren bush, haunted only by the 

 "morepork" and the apteryx, Kussell was humming 

 with vitality, her harbour busy with fleets of ships, 

 principally whalers, who found it the most convenient 

 calling-place in the southern temperate zone. Terrible 

 scenes were enacted about its " blackguard beach," 

 orgies of wild debauchery and bloodshed indulged in by 

 the half-savage and utterly lawless crews of the whale- 

 ships. But it never attained to any real importance. 

 As a port of call for whalers, it enjoyed a certain kind of 

 prosperity ; but when the South Sea fishery dwindled, 

 Eussell shrank in immediate sympathy. It never had 

 any vitality of its own, no manufactures or products, 

 unless the wretched coal-mines adjacent, with their dirty 

 output, which is scoffed at by the grimiest tug afloat, 

 could be dignified by the name. 



Eemembering, as I did, the beauty, the energy, and 

 prosperity of the great New Zealand ports, some of them 

 with not a tithe of the natural advantages of Eussell, 

 I felt amazed, almost indignant, at its dead-and-alive 

 appearance. 



Our anchor was no sooner down than the captains 

 of the James Arnold, Matilda Sayer, and Coral lowered 

 and came on board, eager to hear or to tell such news as 

 was going. As we had now grown to expect, all work 

 was over immediately the sails were fast and decks 

 cleared up, so that we were free to entertain our visitors. 



