where Captain Ellis, the Magistrate, made us thoroughly comfortable. Next day we bade farewell to Mr. Pinkerton, our guide, who expressed his unstinted admiration for the way in which the Bishop had come through such a trial of endurance. "I've known what hardship and thirst are in Australia, and this young fellow—well, he's young,—but the Bishop was an example to both of us!"
We stayed a few days at the Bluff, and then, on foot, made for the head of the harbour, crossing a low pass in the hills which encircle it, and reached the estuary of the river, locally known as Jacob's river, but in Maori, Aparima,—Anglicé, "the river of the five companies of workmen"—the southernmost river in New Zealand, wide, and full of water, in many places inland running over a rocky bottom. We found on the banks of the estuary a comfortable hut, in which two young sailors had established themselves, acting as ferrymen to carry travellers up the river to the settlement of Invercargill. Next day we reached it, in its very first stage of a possible town, if that term can be applied to six little houses, built of wooden slabs and trunks of tree-fern on the edge of an extensive forest, which bounds a rich plain, very swampy, and dotted with rough herbage. As the boat landed us a mile below the houses, we had to thread our way through waterholes and swamps, and, dusk coming on, we often found ourselves in deep water. We found accommodation in a house of call kept by a Dane, consisting of one living-room, two small bedrooms on either side, an open loft over them, and a lean-to kitchen; the four bedrooms being occupied, two late-comers were provided with blankets, one of them climbing up on to the loft, and disposing himself there,
