A WORD TO THE TOURIST

Passengers to New Zealand may be roughly divided into two kinds—those who go to settle there, and those who go as visitors merely. The visitors, again, may be separated into sportsmen, invalids, and ordinary tourists who land in the country in order to look round and depart, “to glance and nod and hurry by.” Now by passengers and travellers of all sorts and conditions I, a Government official, may be forgiven if I advise them to make all possible use of the Government of the Dominion. For it is a Government ready and willing to give them help and information. I may be pardoned for reminding English readers that the Dominion has an office in London with a bureau, where inquirers are cheerfully welcomed and inquiries dealt with. Official pamphlets and statistics may not be stimulating or exciting reading; but, though dry and cautious, they are likely to be fairly accurate. So much for the information to be got in England. When the passenger lands in New Zealand, I can only repeat the advice—let him make every use he can of the Government. If he be in search of land, he cannot do better than make his way to the nearest office of the Lands and Survey Department. If he be a skilled labourer whose capital is chiefly in his muscles and trade knowledge, the Department of Labour will tell him where he can best seek for employment. Last, but not least, if he be a tourist of any of the three descriptions above mentioned, he cannot easily miss the Tourist Department, for that ubiquitous organisation has agents in every part of the islands. Once in their hands, and brought by them into touch with the State and the facilities its railways offer, the traveller’s path is made as smooth as ample knowledge and good advice can make it. The journey from Auckland to Wellington may now be made by railway, while the voyage from Wellington to Lyttelton is but a matter of ten to eleven hours. Old colonists will understand what a saving of time and discomfort these changes mean.

The visitor need not overburden himself with any cumbrous or extravagant outfit. He is going to a civilised country with a temperate climate. The sort of kit that might be taken for an autumn journey through the west of Ireland will be sufficient for a run through New Zealand. A sportsman may take very much what he would take for a hunting or fishing holiday in the highlands of Scotland; and, speaking broadly, the mountaineer who has climbed Switzerland will know what to take to New Zealand. Of course any one who contemplates camping out must add the apparatus for sleeping, cooking, and washing; but these things can be bought in the larger New Zealand towns at reasonable prices.

A much more complicated question is the route which the traveller should follow on landing. The districts for deer-shooting are well known. Indeed, the sportsman need have no difficulty in mapping out a course for himself. All will depend on the season of the year and the special game he is after. Any one interested in the progress of settlement and colonisation may be recommended to pass through the farming district between the Waiau River in Southland and the river of the same name which runs into the sea about sixty miles north of Christchurch. Next he should make a journey from Wellington to New Plymouth, along the south-west coast of New Zealand, and again from Wellington to Napier, threading the districts of Wairarapa, the Seventy Mile Bush, and Hawke’s Bay. The city of Auckland and its neighbourhood, and the valley of the Waikato River also, he should not miss.

Let me suppose, however, that what the tourist wants is rather the wilderness and its scenery than prosaic evidence of the work of subduing the one and wrecking the other. His route then will very much depend on the port that is his starting-point. Should he land at Bluff Harbour he will find himself within easy striking distance of the Otago mountain lakes, all of which are worth a visit, while one of them, Manapouri, is perhaps as romantic a piece of wild lake scenery as the earth has to show. The sounds or fiords of the south-west coast can be comfortably reached by excursion steamer in the autumn. The tougher stamp of pedestrian can get to them at other times in the year by following one of the tracks which cross the mountains from the lake district aforesaid to the western coast. The beauty of the route from Te Anau through the Clinton Valley, and by way of the Sutherland Falls to Milford Sound, is unsurpassed in the island.

Aorangi, the highest peak of the Southern Alps, and the centre of the chief glaciers, is best approached from Timaru, a seaport on the eastern coast a hundred and twelve miles south of Christchurch. Any one, however, who is able to travel on horseback may be promised a rich reward if he follows the west coast, southward from the town of Hokitika, and passes between Aorangi and the sea, on that side. Between Hokitika and the Canterbury Plains the journey by rail and coach is for half its distance a succession of beautiful sights, the finest of which is found in the deep gorge of the Otira River, into which the traveller plunges on the western side of the dividing range. Inferior, but well worth seeing, is the gorge of the Buller River, to be seen by those who make the coach journey from Westport to Nelson. Nelson itself is finely placed at the inner end of the grand arc of Blind Bay. The drive thence to Picton on Queen Charlotte Sound, passing on the way through Havelock and the Rai Valley, has charming points of view.

The better scenery of the North Island is not found in the southern portion unless the traveller is prepared to leave the beaten track and do some rough scrambling in the Tararua and RuahinÉ Mountains. Then, indeed, he will have his reward. Otherwise, after taking in the fine panorama of Wellington Harbour, he may be recommended to make his way with all convenient speed to New Plymouth and the forest-clad slopes of Mount Egmont. Thence he should turn to the interior and reach the Hot Lakes district by way of one of the river valleys. That of the Mokau is extremely beautiful in its rich covering of virgin forest. But the gorges of the Wanganui are not only equal to anything of the kind in beauty, but may be ascended in the most comfortable fashion. Arrived at the upper end of the navigable river, the traveller will make his way by coach across country to Lake Taupo and the famous volcanoes of its plateau.