Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/193

 The University of Otago has recently taken a new departure in a most sensible and practical direction, in sending travelling professors to lecture to the mining population on the chemistry and technology of rocks, ores, &c. They might well enlarge their field, and give lectures to farmers on chemistry of soils, rotation of crops, adaptations of mechanics to farming processes, and on other subjects of practical importance to farmers.

But of this more anon.

We left the peaceful manse of Warepa with many regrets, and passing through a bare pastoral and agricultural country, with little of interest in the scenery, reached Gore, the bustling little town where the Waimea cross-roads railway branches off through the fertile but bare Waimea plains, to join the Lakes line at Lumsden.

All the burns and streams in this part of the country are well stocked with trout, and in the season this is quite an angler's paradise. The Mataura River, a stream of some magnitude, traverses the Waimea plains, and runs past Gore. It is full of trout. The price of a fishing licence is twenty shillings for the season.

Gore, eighteen years ago, had not even a house to boast of. It was only a police camp, and a few canvas tents constituted the township. It is now the busy centre of a fine farming district. It has a great saw-mill, a flour-mill or two, and some capital stores, hotels, banks, and other buildings lining its well-laid-out streets.

It lies at the mouth of the wide Waimea Valley.