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 too, the Harbour Board is vigilant and active. It is indeed pleasant to see the signs of so much enterprise and public spirit. The sea-shore here is fringed with shifting banks of shingle, which has been carried down from the main range by the swift rivers that tear through the gorges and denude the hill country, on a scale which is, perhaps, paralleled nowhere else on the face of our globe. This moving shingle is carried up by the currents, which set strongly into the bay, and many leagues of lagoon which formerly existed have been silted up by the sea action. In fact, the bold spit, behind which lies the town itself, was formerly an island; and tradition has it, that Captain Cook sailed between the spit, which was then called Scinde Island, and the mainland, over the very spot on which is now built the trim, bustling town. Port Ahuriri, the merchants' centre, with all its great wool and produce stores, and commodious warehouses, is built on reclamations from the marsh. On the shingle bars, in fact, which have been cast up by the ocean currents. There is still a great body of water in the lagoon inland, and this creates a very powerful scour, sufficient to keep the channel deep and open with the aid of a dredge, which is constantly at work. The workmen employed by the Harbour Board are kept busily engaged raking out and stacking up the great round water-worn boulders, which the tides are perpetually casting on the bank at the mouth of the harbour. Acting under reliable engineering advice, the board propose to build out