Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/168

130 Government, with fifty sheep and other provisions for the officers and crew, so soon as Dr Hector had readied the nearest settlement and made our situation known by telegraph. Shortly afterwards the ‘Virago’ also arrived to the aid of the ‘Clio.’ Commodore Stirling then determined to take his ship to be docked at Sydney, so, on the morning of the 1st March, I left Bligh Sound in the ‘Storm Bird’ for Invercargill. After passing successively the entrances of George, Caswell, Charles, and Nancy Sounds, we anchored at sunset in the secure harbour of Deas Cove, about three miles from the entrance of Thomson Sound. On the following morning we started at daybreak, steamed up Thomson Sound, and returned to the open sea by Doubtful Inlet. After passing the entrance to Daggs Sound, we entered Breaksea Sound and regained the sea by Dusky Bay, in which Captain Cook remained for several weeks in 1773, and which he has described with his usual graphic accuracy. Afterwards we passed the entrances to Chalky and Preservation Inlets, and then proceeded to the Solander, at the west end of Foveaux Straits. It had been reported that some seamen had been cast away there from a recent wreck; but after a careful examination, no trace of any visitors could be found on these desolate rocks, so we bore up for Invercargill, where I landed on the 3rd March. Here began an official tour of great interest through the Middle Island, where I was received by the provincial authorities and by all classes of the community with a warmth of courtesy and hospitality for which I shall ever feel grateful.

“Although Milford Sound, at the extreme north of the thirteen inlets of the West Coast, surpasses the rest in stern grandeur and awful solitude, they all have many features in common. They are everywhere deep and narrow, subject to violent winds and strong tides and currents, and with few safe and sheltered anchorages. A tumbled sea of mountains looks down from above on the long swell of the southern ocean, breaking in clouds of snowy white foam on craggy cliffs rising abruptly from the shore, while glaciers and snowy peaks, slopes covered with noble forest trees, gloomy valleys and glittering waterfalls, all combine to present an ever varying succession of sublime pictures.

“The official tours of a Governor may be made practically useful, for they enable him to point out, from personal knowledge and in an authoritative shape, the resources and capabilities of the districts of the Colony over which he presides, and the advantages which they afford for immigration and for the advancement of capital. I have learned from several quarters that the published reports of my visits to all parts of New Zealand have awakened much interest in the mother country. Time will not permit me, on the present occasion, to discuss the future prospects of a settlement on the sounds of the West Coast, of which I have attempted a general description. It has been proposed to place some Norwegian emigrants on one or more of these fiords, but any scheme of this nature would require careful consideration. There are now no inhabitants whatsoever, either of Europeans or Maoris; the few families of natives seen in Dusky Bay in 1773, by Captain Cook, appear to have become extinct, and the tales related by the old whalers thirty years ago, concerning a tribe of wild men haunting these desolate shores, have probably as little