mornings and evenings are deliciously fresh and invigorating. You
can remain out late without the least danger. Malaria is unknown,
and, in spite of the heavy rains, there is no such thing as damp.
Our way lay through very pretty country--a series of terraces, with
a range of mountains before us, with beautiful changing and
softening evening tints creeping over the whole.

I am sorry to say, we leave this next week. I should like to
explore a great deal more.



Letter VI: Society.--houses and servants.


Christchurch, January 1866.
I am beginning to get tired of Christchurch already: but the truth
is, I am not in a fair position to judge of it as a place of
residence; for, living temporarily, as we do, in a sort of
boarding-house, I miss the usual duties and occupations of home, and
the town itself has no place of public amusement except a little
theatre, to which it is much too hot to go. The last two weeks have
been _the_ gay ones of the whole year; the races have been going on
for three days, and there have been a few balls; but as a general
rule, the society may be said to be extremely stagnant. No
dinner-parties are ever given--I imagine, on account of the
smallness of the houses and the inefficiency of the servants; but
every now and then there is an assembly ball arranged, in the same
way, I believe, as at watering-places in England only, of course, on
a much smaller scale. I have been at two or three of these, and