Port Chalmers, with its large dockyard and wharves, looked a pretty seafaring little town, half-built on the peninsula formed by the sea on one side, and the arm of it that runs inland, on the other, making a broad river that passes by Dunedin. A concrete wall has been made, to force the current into a channel which is being gradually deepened, so that vessels of large draught will be able to anchor at the city wharfs. The citizens fully realize the immense importance of this work, and are showing great energy and enterprise, and expending large sums of money on the scheme. Skirting along by the sea, lighted buoys marking the course of the channel, we saw a dark hill before us, illuminated with innumerable bright spots of light, clustering thickly at the bottom, and at 8 p.m. we ran into the station of Dunedin.
The Grand Hotel here is the largest and most handsomely furnished hotel, not only in New Zealand but in the whole of Australasia. The proprietor has to pay 2000l. a year for his ground-rent alone, and thirty years ago that same plot of land is said to have been given in exchange for a cow.
Saturday, October 18th.—The mayor called and took C. over the gaol, the Town Hall, and the new High School. At noon we drove out with Mr. Weldon, the head of the police, and Mr. Cargill, the son of Captain Cargill, the first leader of the colony of Otago, to Burnside, the manufacturing suburb of Dunedin, to see the works of the New Zealand Meat Freezing Company.
The sheep are slaughtered in a line, by eight butchers, who can each kill his fifty a day. The carcases hang for twenty-four hours, and are then placed in the freezing chambers, in a temperature ten or twelve degrees below freezing-point. By means of machinery the air is compressed and reduced to freezing-point, and pumped into the freezing rooms, which are of different degrees of temperature. Putting on extra wraps, we went into these rooms. The thick, misty air was intensely cold, icicles hung from the roof, and the carcases were frosted with ice. We passed between rows and rows of the ghastly carcases, their truncated bodies drooping pathetically towards the ground. Lighted only by a lantern, there was something awful in looking round in the misty dusk and seeing nothing but the pink carcases of hundreds of dead sheep. We tapped them with a hammer, and they resounded like wood. After two days in the freezing-rooms, each carcase is tied into a sack, and is then ready for export. A branch line to the railway runs into the shed, and they are killed, frozen, and shipped at the rate of 1s. 2d. per pound.
On board ship the store chambers are maintained at 20° Fahrenheit, and the meat will keep for any length of time, until thawed.
The meat-freezing trade ought to form one of New Zealand's great exports, with her rich pasture and sheep runs, and small home consumption; but several large meat-freezing companies have lately temporarily suspended operations, owing to the fall in price of the English market. The exporters say it cannot pay them unless the price is maintained between 6d. and 7d. per pound.
We had luncheon with Mr. and Mrs. Cargill at "The Cliffs." It is a concrete house, built on the top of a hill at the cliffs, and commanding a fine view of the coast for many miles. On the ocean beach below, the surf of the South Pacific is for ever rolling in, in long breakers that leave their track of foam on the sandy shore of the cove.
Dunedin was founded in 1848, by a colony of Scotch settlers, under the leadership of Captain Cargill, who, at the instance of the late Thomas Chambers, called the town Dunedin, the ancient name for Edinburgh. It is the largest of the New Zealand towns, is the great centre of commercial activity, and has the finest stone buildings. Princes' Street is broad and handsome, and contains the magnificent structure of the Bank of New Zealand. Besides, there is the Museum, the Post Office, the Hospital, the High School, the University and Government Buildings, all built of the same cream-coloured Bath stone.
There are nine separate municipalities within Dunedin and its suburbs. The entire population is Scotch; and when you think that it is only thirty years ago since the first settlers arrived in Otago, and founded Dunedin, the enterprising citizens may well be proud of