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286 from half a mile to two or three miles in width; their sides rise almost perpendicularly, sometimes for hundreds of feet, and they are nearly all too deep to permit ships to anchor. Sounding-lines a thousand feet long often fail to find bottom there. Perhaps they are called sounds because they can't be sounded.

"These sounds are supposed to be ancient moraines, and during the ice period of the world they were the beds of glaciers coming from immense lakes, encircling the bases of the mountains and covering areas of thousands of miles. Altogether the scenery of the Southern Alps is said to be magnificent."

Doctor Bronson had decided to make no stop on the way until reaching Dunedin, and though earnestly urged to spend a day at Timaru, in order to see the harbor works there, the establishment for freezing meat, the barbed wire factory, and other enterprises, he did not swerve from his resolution. The party reached Dunedin late in the evening, and went to the hotel which had been recommended as one of the best. They had no occasion to complain of it, and in the morning were ready to "do" the sights of the place.

Dunedin has the reputation of being the largest, best built, and most important commercial city of New Zealand; it is the capital of the provincial district of Otago, and the commercial centre of a large area of country. The settlement of Otago was projected in 1846, and it was intended to be exclusively occupied by adherents of the Free Kirk of