It has all the characteristics of a thriving city; gas, paved streets, horse-railways, race-course, theatres, schools, academies, churches, colleges, parks, gardens, museum, manufactories, and numerous other urban things and institutions, all are to be found here. There are three daily papers published in Dunedin, and a score of weeklies and monthlies, and there is an excellent library, supported partly by the municipal authorities, and partly by contributions of enterprising citizens. With its immediate suburbs it has a population of fifty thousand, and is steadily increasing year by year. Its Scotch origin is apparent in the faces and accent of the great majority of the residents, and by the statue of the Scottish poet, Burns, which stands protected by a railing in front of the town-hall. Most of the streets are named after those of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Our friends spent two days at Dunedin, and so attentive were the gentlemen to whom they brought introductions that there were very few leisure moments. Drives in the city and the suburbs, visits to the manufactories of various kinds, the public buildings, and the harbor, luncheons and dinners at the houses of their friends, kept them as busy as bees. They had hardly a minute to themselves, until they finally shook the dust of Dunedin from their feet, and departed with their faces once more towards the South Pole. Frank and Fred declared that their journals were so far behind that it would be difficult for them to catch up, and they had not taken nearly as many notes of what they saw and heard in Dunedin as they desired.
"I wanted," said Frank, "to make a note of the things they manufacture in Otago, and especially at Dunedin, but the list was so long and time so scarce that I didn't try; but I'll remark particularly that they manufacture a good deal of woollen cloth, leather, cotton, and other fabrics, which is something very unusual for so young a colony. There is more manufacturing here than in any other part of New Zealand, and the Scotch settlers of Otago seem to have brought here the thrift and industry for which their native land is celebrated."
HYDRAULIC MINING.
Doctor Bronson asked Fred if he had learned anything about the product of gold in Otago.
"I have the figures right here," was the reply. "From 1861, when the first discoveries were made, down to the end of March, 1884, the Otago gold-fields produced 4,319,544 ounces, which were valued at £17,026,320, or about $85,000,000. Most of the gold has been obtained from alluvial washings of various kinds, such as sluicing, tunnelling, and hydraulic washing; auriferous reefs have been successfully worked in several instances, and unsuccessfully in more. Gold-mining has become a regular industry of the country, and is less subject to fluctuations than in former times. Once in a while a new field is opened, and there is a rush to work it; but the excitement over such discoveries is not like that of the five or ten years following 1861.