imported for uses to which New Zealand coal is not adapted exceeds the export by nearly fifty thousand tons."
From Dunedin our friends proceeded by rail again to Invercargill, 139 miles from Dunedin, or 369 from Christchurch. Invercargill is a
A MOUNTAIN WATER-FALLprosperous town of some eight or ten thousand inhabitants, and is near the southern end of South Island, a sort of jumping-off place, as Frank called it while looking at its location on the map. The real terminus of the island, though not its most southerly point, is The Bluffs, about seventeen miles below Invercargill, which stands on an estuary called New River Harbor.
The morning after their arrival the travelling trio took the train for Kingston, eighty-seven miles, at the southern end of Lake Wakatipu. The train carried them through a fine country of broad plains dotted here and there with tracts of forest. The region appeared to be well settled, as there were little villages scattered at irregular intervals, fields and pastures surrounded by fences, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, isolated farms, saw-mills, and other evidences of settlement and prosperity. Several branch railways diverge from the main line and open up agricultural, pastoral, mining, lumber, and other districts of much present or prospective value.
"As we approached the lake," said Frank in his journal, "the country became more mountainous and picturesque. The train wound through a long defile, and then came out upon the 'Five Rivers Plains,' which take their name from five streams of water that pass through them. We passed through the Dome Gorge, and at Athol, sixty-nine miles from Invercargill, the conductor told us we were in the lake country. The hills and mountains were everywhere about us, and in the west the great range of the Alps rose into the sky. At Kingston the railway ends, and we stepped on board the steamboat, which carried
