u 3 8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



tides regular, both shores indented with capital bays and coves, and fresh water and 

 timber abundant. The scenery is charming; forest-clad hills; plashing streams emerging 

 from gullies and gorges resplendent with tree-ferns, palms, flowering shrubs and trees ; 

 birds of attractive plumage flitting about ; and fish leaping from the placid bosom of the 

 water such are the constituent features of the coup-d'&il. An amphitheatre of hills locks 

 in the voyager from the outer world. The White Rocks, Motuara and Long Island lie 

 within the entrance, and abreast of Motuara are three coves, the most southern of 

 which is Ship Cove, familiar by name to every reader of " Cook's Voyages." The double 

 bay of Waitohi, on the southern side, contains the port and town of Picton, chief outlet 

 for Marlborough, the smallest province of New Zealand. It was detached from Nelson 

 in 1859, and has an area of about three million acres. Its physical geography may be 

 summed up as a succession of parallel valleys and mountain ranges, running generally 

 north-east and south-west, the most northerly and westerly valleys being those of the 

 Pelorus and the Rai, which are covered with valuable forests prolific in such marketable 

 timbers as the white pine, rimii, inatai and totara. 



Picton is a very small place, and if the man of commerce is disappointed with it 

 the tourist will find the scenery replete with interest. The town is built on an alluvial 

 flat of no great width, backed by undulating ranges, and the buildings skirt the water- 

 side. Although only a small place, it supports five hotels, has its own newspaper, and 

 possesses several churches, besides a telegraph office, a court-house and a hospital ; there 

 are also saw-mills in the vicinity. Moreover, it is connected by rail with the provincial 

 capital, Blenheim, which lies in the centre of the Wairau Plain, eighteen miles distant 

 that same Wairau Plain which in 1843 was stained with the blood of the settlers who 

 fell in the first serious conflict with the Maori. Blenheim is situated at the confluence 

 of the Rivers Omaka and Opawa, and is a busy and interesting little place, furnished 

 with all the comforts and conveniences to be expected in a township of its size. The 

 leading banks and insurance companies are represented ; Ewart's Hall and the Oddfellows' 

 Hall fully meet the demands of public entertainment, and there is besides a literary 

 institute with a good library, while the hotel accommodation is ample. Market Street is 

 the principal thoroughfare. The Telegraph Station is the most important in the colony, 

 for this is the point whence all South Island messages for the sister island are for- 

 warded to Wellington, and it is also the distributing station for messages from the 

 North Island for places situated in the South. 



Leaving Picton, and clearing Cape Jackson on the course westward to Nelson, the 

 tourist steams across the entrance to Pelorus Sound and past the mouth of Admiralty 

 Bay, with its hilly, wooded islets, to Blind or Tasman Bay. It is approached by the 

 narrow wall-like French Pass between D'Urville Island and the main-land. Right in 

 front appears a mass of green mountains, apparently impenetrable, to which the vessel 

 approaches nearer and nearer, until all at once she shoots round a projecting limb, 

 and enters a rocky channel one hundred and seventeen yards broad, with a strong 

 and swift current running at the rate of from eight to ten miles an hour. High hills 

 completely shut in this truly straight and narrow gate, and the scenery is striking in the 

 extreme. Passing out of it, the eastern side of Tasman Bay is coasted, with the Castor 

 Peak stretching over Croisilles (Croix lie} Harbour, to a height of from three thousand 



