Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/315

Rh us the whole length of the lake. The lake is sixty miles long, and reminded us of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.

"We spent the night at Queenstown, a mining and agricultural town about twenty miles from Kingston, and on the next day completed our journey to the head of the lake. The scenery is magnificent, and I can no more describe it adequately in words than I can tell how a nightingale sings or a mangosteen tastes. All around us are the mountains, the highest peaks covered with perpetual snow that seems to flash back the rays of the sun, before whose heat it refuses to melt. In the distance, higher than all the rest, is Mount Earnslaw; we saw it clearly defined against the sky, but it is very often veiled by the fleecy clouds that sweep around it.

"I am not surprised that the mountains of New Zealand have been called the Southern Alps, for they certainly bear a close resemblance to the Alpine chain of Switzerland; but I do not think any single peaks are equal to the Matterhorn or the Jungfrau, though Mount Earnslaw can well be called the peer of Mont Blanc. On the whole, the scenery of the lake is not surpassed by that of any one of the Swiss lakes; and when New Zealand becomes the regular field for tourists there will be a good deal of travel to Lake Wakatipu. Most of the residents shorten the name of the lake to Wakatip.