We set out forthwith, to take a closer view of the place, 
which bids fair to become more and more a place of amusement 
for Auckland; which, however, as yet had but very little of 
the appearance of a fashionable summer-resort , although , as I have 
been informed , even the governor does not mind passing some 
weeks in the summer of every year with his family at this place; 
of course, in tents like all the rest. With the exception of some 
small huts and the pilot’s house, there was no shelter to be found 
upon the North Shore. But it seems to be a pleasure to a great 
many inhabitants of Auckland, to exchange for a short time 
the comforts and conveniences of a house for the simple living 
in a tent. 
The North Shore is a peninsula, and was probably formerly 
an island. Only a narrow , slender strip of sand connects the pen- 
insula with the mainland. Small as it is , measuring scarcely a 
mile at its widest part between the Waitemata and the East-branch 
of Shoal Bay , it nevertheless presents various points of attraction 
to the geologist. The western half consists of tertiary sandstone 
and shale , forming precipitous walls on the Auckland-side , in which 
near the high-water line small seams of lignite crop out. Farther 
East the tertiary strata cease, making room for a hat strand cov- 
ered with muscle-shells. Those shells arc piled up in heaps several 
feet high, and, there being no limestone in the vicinity of Auck- 
land, they arc burnt for lime. Behind the muscle-banks small 
extinct volcanic cones arise , the scorke and lavas of which 
extend farther West to the sea. The principal one of these cones 
is Mount Victoria, formerly called Takarunga, a crater-cone nearly 
300 feet high, upon which a flagstaff has been erected. 
In passing along the beach, we came to a kind of scaffold 
about 30 feet long. Our organs of smell betrayed to us at a con- 
siderable distance its object. A long row of fish, sharks and 
other kinds, were suspended from it to dry, tossed to and fro by 
the wind and promising the natives a favourite dish for the winter 
with a great deal of “haut gout.” Fat pigs and lean dogs were 
running about ; and farther on , there were some Maori huts. The 
