"We spent the night at Queenstown, a mining and agricultural town about twenty miles from Kingston, and on the next day completed our journey to the head of the lake. The scenery is magnificent, and I can no more describe it adequately in words than I can tell how a nightingale sings or a mangosteen tastes. All around us are the mountains, the highest peaks covered with perpetual snow that seems to flash back the rays of the sun, before whose heat it refuses to melt. In the distance, higher than all the rest, is Mount Earnslaw; we saw it clearly defined against the sky, but it is very often veiled by the fleecy clouds that sweep around it.
SHOTOVER GORGE BRIDGE.
"I am not surprised that the mountains of New Zealand have been called the Southern Alps, for they certainly bear a close resemblance to the Alpine chain of Switzerland; but I do not think any single peaks are equal to the Matterhorn or the Jungfrau, though Mount Earnslaw can well be called the peer of Mont Blanc. On the whole, the scenery of the lake is not surpassed by that of any one of the Swiss lakes; and when New Zealand becomes the regular field for tourists there will be a good deal of travel to Lake Wakatipu. Most of the residents shorten the name of the lake to Wakatip.
"We were urged to stop at Queenstown and see the mining operations in the neighborhood, but time did not permit us to do so, and we returned to Invercargill as quickly as the railway and steamboat could carry us. Queenstown is one of the mining centres of the Otago gold-fields, which we have already mentioned, and has had the usual ups and downs of mining life. The Otago mines cover a wide extent of country, and as much of the region in which they lie is agricultural, living is cheaper here than in most other mining regions.
"A good many Chinese are engaged in mining in the New Zealand gold-fields, and we were told that in one place—Orepuki—there was a mining population of four hundred Chinese that subscribed £100 ($500) towards building a Presbyterian church, the total cost being less than a thousand dollars. And yet I presume there are white men in Orepuki who would call one of their Mongolian neighbors a 'heathen Chinee!' Near Dunedin and other places, as well as in the neighborhood of most of the Australian cities, the market-gardening is largely managed by the Chinese. They seem to have almost a monopoly of this business, and we were told that no European could successfully compete with them when they went at it in earnest."