262 
DUNEDIN 
CHAP. 
hints as to the mutual benefit we might experience, did 
we join in our work of edifying the world with de- 
scriptions of our travels. I was sorry to disappoint 
him, but feared my ambitions were so much less than 
his own that my co-operation might prove more a 
hindrance than a help. 
Dunedin is purely a Scotch town, and all its streets 
are named after those in Edinburgh. The first early 
settlers were whalers. Then it was a land of scrub 
and flax so thick that every step of the way had to be 
hewn out. It went ahead very slowly until 1861, 
when gold was first discovered in the Taupeka district, 
and then at Gabriel’s Gully. Population streamed in, and 
the town rapidly grew. It is built in an irregular way 
up the hills. To the left is a narrow neck of land 
connecting the city with the long peninsula which runs 
along the opposite side of the bay. The Maoris say 
that, in the early days, at high tide this was an island. 
Two days after, I drove for twenty miles on the 
opposite side of the harbour, where I spent a delightful 
three days at Mr. Larnach’s beautiful home. Here 
you get a magnificent panoramic view of Dunedin and 
the surrounding country, the entrance to the harbour 
with its broken coast-line, and the open ocean on the 
other side with its white line of breakers combing the 
reefs on the high rocky headlands and sweeping in and 
out of the sandy reaches. Every inch of the rich 
lands is cultivated, and pretty homesteads are dotted 
about the hills in every direction. Driving home 
again, the level road skirts close to the water’s edge 
round bluff headlands and past sandbanks where the 
fisherman drags his net. In the evening the empty 
milk-carts go home, and two lovers walking hand-in- 
hand were all that we met as we drove back in the 
soft drowsiness of an autumn afternoon. 
