DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF NEW ZEALAND. 





THE AUCKLAND FREE LIHRARY AND ART GALLERY. 



nine fathoms. The en- 

 trance between the North 

 Head and Rangitoto is 

 fully two miles wide, and 

 the depth from eight to 

 ten fathoms, with safe 

 anchorage in six to seven 

 fathoms in any kind of 

 weather, while opposite to 

 the city the anchorage is 

 from seven to nine fathoms 

 for a breadth of a mile 

 and a half, and six miles 

 further up the depth is 



four fathoms. The least depth of the Harbour is thirty-six feet at dead low-water 

 springs, to which may be added from ten to sixteen feet for rise and fall. The working 

 ship-channel, with its average depth of thirty-six feet, varies in breadth from a maximum 

 of two miles to a minimum of not less than a mile between the limits of the North 

 Head at the immediate entrance and Kauri Point, where the Waitemata sweeps away 

 to Riverhead. Of the quays the principal are the Queen Street Wharf and the Railway 

 Wharf. The former, which lies to the side of the city, is the longest in the colony. 



For a considerable distance outward from the fore-shore there is an extension of 

 solid stone breakwater, with an outer projection and lateral tees powerfully built of wood. 

 This wharf runs out sixteen hundred and eighty feet into the stream, the Railway 

 Wharf being one thousand and fifty feet long. Beyond the Queen Street and Hobson 

 Street Wharves lies a commodious graving-dock, which was solidly constructed of stone 

 in 1878, measuring three hundred feet in length, forty-four feet across at the entrance, 



