DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF NEW ZEALAND. 



1179 



Otago, so named from a corruption of the Maori word " Otakou," signifying red earth, 

 and originally applied merely to the still existing native settlement on the heights above 

 Port Chalmers. Gradually the level prairie becomes more undulating, and shortly after 

 three o'clock the traveller finds himself in the outskirts of Oamaru. Looking seaward, 

 the port is seen to be a fac-simile of that at Timaru. Originally a dangerous open 

 roadstead, skill and enterprise have combined to convert it into a safe and commodious 

 harbour by the construction of a concrete breakwater, one thousand eight hundred and fifty 

 feet long, thirty-six feet wide, and thirty-two feet high, and of a rubble mole stretching 

 out for one thousand seven hundred and twenty feet in the direction of the breakwater, 

 the- entrance between them being about four hundred feet wide, and the space enclosed 



THAMES STREET, OAMARU. 



having an area of about sixty acres. Vessels with a draught of twenty-four feet can be 

 conveniently berthed alongside the commodious wharves, upon which the trucks from 

 the railway can be run down to the very side of the shipping. 



The town is very well built, of an almost perfectly white stone, from the prevalent 

 use of which as a local building material it has received the very appropriate title of 

 "The White City." It is the handsomest town of its size in the colony. The stone, 

 of which extensive quarries exist in the immediate neighbourhood, contains over ninety 

 per cent, of carbonate of lime, and is said to be exactly similar to the Maltese lime- 

 stone of which the town of Valetta is built. Oamaru is the outlet of the most extensive 

 and prolific grain-producing district of New Zealand, and the massive piles of architecture 

 grouped about the business portion of the town, as well as the presence of numerous 

 local industries, indicate the energy and progressive character of the population. Thames 

 Street is a noble thoroughfare, possessing some stately buildings; among those that 



