Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/272

174 right and left the ocean beats against high, rocky cliffs, rolls ceaselessly through caves, and sweeps up short, yellow beaches. One of the most absorbing spots is the convenient cliff profile, Lawyer's Head, the northern terminus of St. Kilda beach. Here, on a coast of half-submerged rocks, and sand-dunes held in place by a tangle of wiry grasses and shrubs, the sea constantly floods and drains a weird and cavernous playground. Here brown seaweed scourges, from twenty to thirty feet long, unceasingly flay the rocks that give their tenacious roots support. One moment they dive to their roots; the next instant, struggling like coiling snakes or sweeping in gracefully on a breaker, they furiously assail their dripping, adamantean home.

Almost at the southern extremity of the South Island, one hundred and thirty-nine miles from Dunedin, is Invercargill, the roomiest town in New Zealand and the most southern town of its population in the world. The founders of Invercargill must have been advocates of the broad-gauge principle; for the town's two main business streets, Dee and Tay, are each one hundred and thirty-two feet wide. To a Wellington man they probably look nearly wide enough for a cross-country run.

In Invercargill five railways centre, and it ranks next to Dunedin as a gateway to the Cold Lakes and the western sounds. In oversea shipping, Invercargill's port, the Bluff, seventeen miles distant, is the third entry and clearance point in the Dominion. At the Bluff concentrates New Zealand's largest oyster