Yarding bullocks is,however,a bad plan.They do their day's work of from fifteen to twenty miles,or sometimes more,at one spell,and travel at the rate of from two and a half to three miles an hour.
The road from Christ Church to Main's is metalled for about four and a half miles;there are fences and fields on both sides,either laid down in English grass or sown with grain;the fences are chiefly low ditch and bank planted with gorse,rarely with quick,the scarcity of which detracts from the resemblance to English scenery which would otherwise prevail.The copy,however,is slatternly compared with the original;the scarcity of timber,the high price of labour,and the pressing urgency of more important claims upon the time of the small agriculturist,prevent him,for the most part,from attaining the spick-and-span neatness of an English homestead.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 3000feet 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.