who had letters saying that the Bishop was coming southward, and was delighted to welcome us, sending a boy with some fodder for our horses, as it was not an easy task to extricate them at night from the bush. Dunedin is a Scotch Settlement, founded some years before Canterbury, chiefly Presbyterian, with a few Church people, a resident clergyman, and a small wooden church.
Beyond Dunedin our route lay through country that promises well for future settlement, but at present is very perplexing to travellers, who must find their way through swamps and hills, so like each other, that it is only too easy to miss your road, and here it was I received excellent advice from a traveller:—"As you go on, always turn often and look back; remember, you have to come back again, and must know your landmarks." We came to the Molyneux River, one of the largest in New Zealand, unfordable, and with difficulty navigable, owing to the swiftness of its current. Its Maori name is "Matau,"—Anglicé, "the water of eddying surface," as indeed we found it, crossing in a boat rowed by a ferryman, whilst from the stern I towed our three horses with ropes, no easy matter, as the boat swung hither and thither in the swirling stream, and I had to pay out and haul in line as if I had three powerful fish on hand; and here I began to suspect that "Dick" was a dubious swimmer, which suspicion afterwards was verified to our cost.
It was interesting to notice, in various houses, different traits indicating the sort of people who had adventured themselves to the ends of the earth to subdue a wilderness and begin the work of a new colony,—all of them, in every class, persons of strong
