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Remuera as it was.

Campbell and his friends fell in love with the delectable Remuera, then as now the most beautiful harbour-facing part of the Tamaki isthmus. He tried in vain to buy those slants, for which the Maori has also that pleasing name Ohinerau, “The Place of Many Girls.”

“Beautiful was Remuera's shore,” wrote the Doctor, “sloping gently to Waitemata's sunlit waters in the days of which I write. The palm fern-tree was there with its crown of graceful bending fronds and black feathery-looking young shoots; and the karaka, with its brilliantly-polished green leaves and golden-yellow fruit, contrasting with the darker crimped and varnished leaf of the puriri, with its bright cherrylike berry. Evergreen shrubs grew on all sides, of every shade from palest to deepest green; lovely flowering creepers mounted high overhead, leaping from tree to tree and hanging in rich festoons; of beautiful ferns there was a profusion underfoot. The tui, with his grand rich note made the wood musical; the great fat stupid pigeon cooed down upon you almost within reach, nor took the trouble to fly away.”