within the Pilot Station at Starling Point, where there is the best shelter from westerly winds. From this point it is nearly a mile’s pull to the site of the township where there are a couple of Inns, a Court House, and a few Stores.

Putting up for the night at the Eagle Hotel, I met there with Mr Lyel, who had just returned from a fortnight’s residence on Dog Island, a rocky islet lying about four miles from the entrance to the harbor, upon which the Government intend to place a lighthouse to assist the navigation of Foveaux Straits. He had been examining the rock of which it is composed, with a view to using it in the construction of the lower part of the tower. From the specimens he showed me, it is a compact greenstone, consisting of an intimate and rarely granular mixture of felspar and hornblende, occasionally with masses of amorphous quartz dispersed through it. The proneness to disintegrate under the action of the weather, and its irregular cleavage, generally render this rock an inferior building material.

26th May.

After an early breakfast on mutton bird, a disagreeable Maori delicacy which I tasted for the first time, I ascended the Bluff Hill, along with several other gentlemen. The rise is over a succession of steps, each of which marks a change in the mineral constitution of the rock. The first step, on a level with the Court House, is composed of highly siliceous felstones of a dark grey color, horny lustre, and splintery fracture forming thick vertical laminae that trend W. 36° N. The second step which is covered with flax and low scrub consists of dark greenish grey syenitic gneiss distinctly tabular, the greater cleavage planes being nearly vertical, and having also the above strike or trend. This rock is traversed by veins of crystalline hornblende rock, and also by injected veins of fine grained granite. The third step consists of felsopathic gneiss, i.e., containing an excess of felspar of a pale flesh color. The fourth is hornblendic like the second. At the summit the rock is more granitic than elsewhere, and contains a little mica as well as hornblende dispersed through it. It is, however, obscurely laminated in the same direction as the previously mentioned rocks, and must, therefore, be considered as a true gneiss. The height of the Bluff Hill, as given in the Admiralty Chart, is 860 feet, and as it commands a splendid view both of the Straits and the interior, it is admirably adapted for the signal station which has been placed there. It would form a most desirable Meteorological Station, as the register could be kept by the signal man, and the results could not fail to be of great interest and utility. The wood which clothes the seaward face of the hill is principally manuka when high up, but there is mixed bush towards the water’s edge. The low scrub which clothes the open portions is principally a small eurybia, a dwarf manuka or tea tree, that is in full flower, also a low gaultheria, and shrub specimens of the same, both covered with berries, and a low dracophyllum or shrub heath. The general appearance of the vegetation with the huge bunches of Maori grass, reminded me of the faces present at an altitude of 2,000 feet, in the mountains to the north. Notwithstanding the season, the sand flies are very troublesome, especially at the top of the hill.

At 11, I started with Cobb’s coach for Invercargill. The road follows the beach round the head of the bay, sometimes passing through the sea, and is therefore only passable when the tide is nearly half way out. A new road is in an advanced state, however, but as it is cut through heavy bush, and not yet metalled, it is too soft for present use. The strata exposed along the shore are vertical greenstone slates and felstones. At the head of the bay, where the road crosses over a low divide to reach the Mokomoko, the rock is indurated clay stone. To this point, it is proposed to make a railway as the first part of a line to the Bluff, the immediate purpose being to carry road metal up to Invercargill, this being the nearest place to the town where hard rock crops out.

From the Mokomoko, the road follows along the estuary of the Oreti or New River, which has only a narrow channel at low water where extensive mud-flats are exposed along its banks. The beach is very hard and firm, excepting where streamlets cross it, and at these the horses have always heavy work. This road is very dangerous for a driver not well acquainted with it, as after dark, or in foggy weather, and especially if the tide is up, it becomes very difficult to keep in the right direction.

I was informed that, on the arrival of the last English Mail, in April last, it was despatched immediately, though after dark, from the Bluff to Invercargill, but the driver, missing his way when traversing these flats, tired his horses and had to unload on a spot far from the bank of the river. When the tide rose, it scattered the boxes over the mud flats and they were only picked up after great searching, and some of course quite saturated. The terraces along the New River estuary, and I suppose all the low plains to the eastward, are composed of fine quartz gravel and sand. This plain is marked by ridges, which doubtless indicate the successive channels which were formed by the Mataura and Oreti rivers at the time they poured their waters into an extension of the present bay prior to the last elevation of the land.

The lowest land is everywhere very peaty on the surface, as shewn by the deep porter colour of the water in the drains. The roads are very bad at present, being only gravelled.