IX PORT CHALMERS 261 
The mountains towered above us in every direction, 
and away beyond were the blue waters of the lake, and 
the dotted houses of Queenstown. From the summit 
the road descends round precipitous cliffs, with great, 
fortress-looking rocks above, and away below the 
yellow stream of the Shotover River. Water-races 
run here and there in every direction round the cliffs, 
and perched up in most inaccessible -looking places 
were tiny homesteads of the miners. What a weird, 
wild life they lead up in these regions ! A wire cage 
crossed the river below us, and here the road wound 
round a sheer wall of perpendicular rock, just a ledge, 
only wide enough to allow the wheels to go over, but 
there is a foot-high wall of rock on the outer edge to 
save us from a dip in the river, hundreds of feet below. 
From Queenstown I went by Invercargill to the 
Bluff, where I caught the steamer back to Dunedin. 
It was blowing such a gale that, even clinging to a 
good stout sailor, it was all I could do to stand against 
the wind, and it was with unspeakable pleasure I 
walked on land again at Port Chalmers. There is not 
sufficient depth for large steamers to come up the 
channel, so we went by rail, the line skirting close 
alongside the landlocked bay for nine miles up to 
Dunedin, which, when I got a longer range of vision 
than I did on my first day, proved the most picturesque 
town in the Southern Hemisphere. 
The first person who greeted me at the hotel was 
my little German doctor. His carpet-bag was by this 
time crammed with the things he had been accumulating, 
all of which were important to his great work of collecting 
data about the country, and, of course, all were poured 
out at my feet, in order to get at the latest, which had 
somehow got down to the bottom. He was very 
curious about my sketches, and threw out various broad 
