Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/324

208 plastered on their exteriors, suggesting age and aiding the imagination in picturing a Mexican settlement.

Just back of Queenstown is Queenstown Hill (2958 feet); westward are Bob's Peak and Ben Lomond; beyond them the loftier Cecil's Peak and Walter Peak; to the east is Queenstown Park, a narrow peninsula separating Queenstown Bay and Frankton Arm. Both private and public grounds have been beautified with imported trees and flowering plants, and bordering the pretty, narrow bay are willow trees.

Along the shores of this bay is one of the most singular beaches in the world. It is inches deep with stone chips, and these and surrounding cobblestones are tipped and streaked with white quartz and many of them glitter with mica. Intermixed with them are countless worn fragments of red, purple, gray, and green glacial drift, and, on the park side of the bay—corks! Never before on any other beach had I seen so many corks as I noted among the graywacke boulders on the west shore of the peninsula. Apparently bottle parties on Queenstown beaches are as common as keg parties in prohibition districts of New Zealand.

Another interesting feature of Queenstown Bay, the cause of which is not so easily accounted for as these evidences of fraternal cheer, is a strange and slow pulsation of the lake, frequently noticeable. At intervals the bay's surface rises very gradually from three to six inches, and then as slowly settles. Several theories respecting the cause of this phenomenon exist; and