A HOLIDAY TOUR IN THE SOUTH ISLAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume I, Issue 64, 8 April 1879, Page 2

A HOLIDAY TOUR IN THE SOUTH ISLAND.

(fiY AN EXCDHSIONIBT.) . . . 1 'On the \yinton line, in the old day*, in ; dry weutlior the rails were apt to take fire from the friction, and on a rainy day, when tlio rails got; nice and greasy* the ongine wliQcls turned round witli little avail, leaving the truin'stutionary, or at best drawing it along at a snail's spaoj. All tliis, how- - ever, ftjd.L'J bjifyre the; ud>unce of clvjllfj&tibJt,! . i ] " and tho line was ultimately laid in the substantial manner llrst alluded to.; ..- ,; y .Winton is a ainiill town of no great tensious, and 1 tob ! clo3t : to : Inverciirgill fof'it ' to over. bocoiiiß-uilargd place. After loaviiig 1 I Winl on tliera is . absolutely Do town of m\y , iinjjorlunco this side, of. the Uko, vi.d tUfl^r^, wlmlo country ja very thinly peo|iled j the J country, however, iippbufi to be good, Wt" ' the superabundance of wot and cold no • doubt seriously operates against it;. .: .' i : "'"Tlio plain traversed by this Hsu is a well watered one; the railway run* parallel to ., the Oreti lliver for miles, and when tlur Oreti is lost you come upon the Mutuurn, whoso frVqueht windings render four cross, ings of it necessary. ' '■ ■ ' ■ • Tlio remarkable clearness of the waters of these rivers, ulio those of the LuUe, attructed

my particular attention 5 the viyers are not uniformly very deep, but there are deep holes in places where thero would probably bo fully ten feet of water, and so clear was the water that yo \ could have counted the pebbles at the bottom had you been inclined so to do; and in the Lake, although its sides run down very steeply, and (lie water consequently gets deep very quietly, s: ill objects of a light c^lor can bo seen on the bottom some little distance from the shore; The Bcenery along the line i 3 pretty, and improves as you approach the L:iko region. The plain narrows into a valley, and tho valley into a gorge, between hills so high that at even the advanced soison at which we saw them, they had small pitches of snow on their summits. The country from Invercargill to the point where the gorgo is entered rises gradually the whole way, but once fairly in the gorge, the inclination is in tho opposite direction, and the fall down to the level of the j Lake is rather a rapid one ; tho railway the while running between tho high preoipitoii3 walls of rock. The scenery here is limited, and of a very rugged cbaractoK but after proceeding down the gorge some little distance, and on rounding a projecting portion of the hills the blue waters of Lake Wakntipu or en before you, ■with high and partly snow-capped mountains bordering it as for as can be seen, the whole forming quite a charming scene. Kingston, which is tho terminus of the Railway, is a small place indeed at present j besides the railway buildings there are only j two hotels and about six or ei^ht cottages. There is a nice jetty, however, built by the Government in connection with .the railway, an to which the trucks are run and di 9. charged into the steamers ply ipg between here and Queenstown. ..-. ,1 .. ; "We found two steamers trading, on. the Lake, both of them small (between 30 and 40 $qnß probably), and one a screwfsteamer and the' other a paddle.- But the day of our arrival at Kington was a red-lettor day in the annals of- the place, as on that day the new steamer which has been,,' building for some time was to be launched. The new boat, built by Kincaid and M 'Queen, pi Dnnedin, is a paddle, about GO tons register, and fitted with .very powerful engines. The launch was ; a most' successful nffulr, and as the ship' glided down the Ways she was christened ': The Mountaineer," the usual champagne ceremony of course being gone through. The old boats only managed to keep up a tri-weekly service between, thenj.ibut tile new one is to run every day, and a very grot boon, she will prove to. toaristß «nd ottM visitors to this locality. ,■■... Kingston, as may be imagined, is an exceedingly, quiet place generally, but on th.ia particular day it was full of life, as over, 100 excursionists had come over from Queenstown in honor o f the uuspioioiis oc easipn, besides a few from Invereargill. After the convivialities of the occasion ■were over, we took ship with tr.e excursionists on board the ss Jane Williams, bound for Queenstown. The trip from Kingston to Queenatpwn, a distance of, about 25 miles, is a very pretty one ; many of the mountains, particularly on the western side, appear to rise perpendicularly from the water's edge, and in tlie raviues that separate some of them miniature waterfalls and caspAdeS ; may be seen. -i! The hills ;pn the eastern side, inear Kingston, are more sloping and quite fit for pasturage, but further up. again they get • terribly abrupt and rugged, terminating in the "Remarkable Mountains," which rise to an altitude of 7,200 feet. These appear to be mighty upheavals of huge solid rock, and in many places are so steep as to be wholly inaccessible from the Lake side. Tho waters of the Lake are very. deep — in fact, wo wore told that in many places no soundings could bo obtained, and in color intensely blue. The width of the Lake ya»-ies from about three to six miles, and is 26 miles long from Kingston to Queenstown, and about 3n miles from Qoeehslown to the' head. • (To bo continued.)