Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/162

126 children and an immense concourse of adults met His Excellency at the town boundary, and the citizens’ ball in the evening was an immense success. The visit throughout was of the most hearty and loyal nature, and during his short stay His Excellency elicited everywhere a strong feeling of popular friendship. Much more might be written of the doings in the inland towns, of addresses presented, of claims and engines and water-races christened, and of luncheon speeches, but I prefer giving place to His Excellency’s interesting narrative of his adventures at the Sounds, to which I have, in an earlier part of this chapter, made reference.

After returning from the coast, at the next annual meeting of the New Zealand Institute, Sir George Bowen, as President, delivered the following address, which gives a minute and graphic description of his visit to the West Coast Sounds:—“ I now proceed to give a short sketch of my visit during the months of February and March, in the present year, to the magnificent, but hitherto little known, Sounds on the South-West Coast of the Middle Island, whither Commodore Stirling conveyed me in H.M.S. ‘Clio.’ Dr Hector accompanied us; and had it not been for the disaster which befel us in Bligh Sound, we expected to have been enabled to collect much practical information respecting that part of the Colony, and also to furnish fresh and valuable notices to the Geographical, Geological, and Zoological Societies of London. It may here be mentioned that the best general descriptions of the South-West Coast of the Middle Island which have hitherto been published will be found in the New Zealand Pilot, compiled chiefly by an honorary member of our Institute, Admiral Richards, F.R.S., the present Hydrographer to the Admiralty; and in a paper by Dr Hector, printed in the thirty-fourth volume (for 1864) of the Journals of the Royal Geographical Society. The notes which I shall now read to you were written while the ‘Clio’ lay disabled in Bligh Sound, and have been partly embodied in my despatches to the Imperial Government.

“We left Wellington on the 4th of last February, but the ‘Clio’ was much delayed at first by baffling winds, and afterwards by a strong contrary gale, with heavy sea. We reached Milford Sound on the 11th, and remained there, examining that extraordinary inlet, until the 17th February.

“Admiral Richards has observed that the only harbours of shelter for large ships along the West Coast of the Middle Island of New Zealand (a distance of five hundred miles) are the thirteen sounds or inlets which penetrate its south-western shore between the parallels of 44 and 46 degrees south latitude, including a space of little more than one hundred miles. They are, counting from the north, and according to the names given chiefly by the adventurous whalers, who alone have frequented these inhospitable regions, as follows:—1. Milford Sound; 2. Bligh Sound; 3. George Sound; 4. Caswell Sound; 5. Charles Sound; 6. Nancy Sound; 7. Thomson Sound; 8. Doubtful Sound; 9. Daggs Sound; 10. Breaksea Sound; 11. Dusky Sound; 12. Chalky Sound; 13. Preservation Inlet. As I wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, these arms of the great southern ocean, cleaving their way through the massive sea wall of steep and rugged clifis, reach far into the wild solitudes of the lofty mountains, which form the cordillera,