n 3 6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



inhabitants* of the Island the majority are half-castes. Its oysters have extended the 

 repute of Stewart Island throughout Australia. The Auckland Islands lie some hundred 

 and eighty miles to the south of New Zealand. They were discovered in 1806, and 

 some forty years later leased by the Crown at a nominal rental to the Southern Whale 

 Fishing Company. Auckland Island, the largest of the group, is about thirty miles in 

 length. Campbell Island, one hundred and forty-five miles south-east of the Auckland 

 Islands, is akin to them, and is about thirty miles round. Macquarie Island, the most 

 southerly of the Australasian Group, is frequented only for its seals. It has a high 

 altitude, is five or six miles broad, and some twenty miles long. The barren clusters of 

 rocky islets known as the Bounty Group and the Antipodes Islands are intermediate 

 between the Chatham and Auckland Groups. 



The South Island is par excellence the place for Alpine scenery. The mountain 

 ranges which lie along the southern shores of Cook Strait converge as they penetrate 

 south until they combine to form that grand Cordillera which, in the province of 

 Canterbury, attains its highest elevation in such lofty peaks as Mount Cook (twelve 

 thousand three hundred and forty-nine feet), Stokes (separated from Mount Cook by a 

 steep col more than seven thousand feet high), Tasman, Tyndal, Darwin, Sefton and 

 Hochstetter, most of which are over eleven thousand feet high. The northern boundary 

 of this mighty mass is said to be Harper's Pass, three thousand five hundred feet high, 

 but still, north of this limit, the chain, now grown more irregular, rises into the 

 Spencer Mountains in Nelson Province, and these attain a considerable altitude in Mounts 

 Franklin and Humboldt. South of Mount Cook, the Southern Alps divide, at Mount 

 Holmes, into the Hooker, the Gray and the Ritter Ranges, but both chains unite again 

 in Mount Stuart and continue in broken form towards Mount Aspiring. On their 

 western side a strip of land with an average breadth of some fifteen miles constitutes 

 the province of Westland, and on the eastern side are the plains of Canterbury. The 

 mountain ranges of Otago have been aptly compared by the Provincial Geologist, F. W. 

 Hutton, to the fingers of the right hand widely spread out, but with the first and 

 second fingers approximated, and with the palm resting in the south-west part of the 

 province of Canterbury. In this case the thumb will represent the Hawkdun and 

 Kahamui Mountains, running north-west and south-east, which form the southern boundary 

 of the Valley of the Waitaki. The first finger will represent the Dunstan and Lammer- 

 law Ranges, which form the eastern water-shed of the Clutha. Between this finger and 

 the next are the Raggedy Range, Rough Ridge, Rock and Pillar Range and the 

 Silver Peak Hills. The second or middle finger will represent all that rugged tract of 

 country between Lakes Wanaka and Wakatipu, called the Harris and Richardson Moun- 

 tains, continued southward in the Remarkables, Garvie Mountains, Obelisk Range and 

 Umbrella Mountains, and running through the Kaihiku Mountains to the sea at Nugget 

 Point. The third, or ring finger, will represent the Humboldt Mountains, the Thomson 

 and Livingstone Mountains, the Takitimu and the Longwood Ranges, lying between Lake 

 Wakatipu and the Oreti River on the east, and the Hollyford River, Lake Te Anau 

 and the Waiau on the west. Between these and the next finger come the Hokonui 

 and Moonlight Ranges, and lastly, the little finger will represent the west coast moun- 

 tain range running in a north-easterly and south-westerly direction. 



