Jump to content

Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/312

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
288
THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN AUSTRALASIA.

HYDRAULIC MINING.

Our friends spent two days at Dunedin, and so attentive were the gentlemen to whom they brought introductions that there were very few leisure moments. Drives in the city and the suburbs, visits to the manufactories of various kinds, the public buildings, and the harbor, luncheons and dinners at the houses of their friends, kept them as busy as bees. They had hardly a minute to themselves, until they finally shook the dust of Dunedin from their feet, and departed with their faces once more towards the South Pole. Frank and Fred declared that their journals were so far behind that it would be difficult for them to catch up, and they had not taken nearly as many notes of what they saw and heard in Dunedin as they desired.

"I wanted," said Frank, "to make a note of the things they manufacture in Otago, and especially at Dunedin, but the list was so long and time so scarce that I didn't try; but I'll remark particularly that they manufacture a good deal of woollen cloth, leather, cotton, and other fabrics, which is something very unusual for so young a colony. There is more manufacturing here than in any other part of New Zealand, and the Scotch settlers of Otago seem to have brought here the thrift and industry for which their native land is celebrated."

Doctor Bronson asked Fred if he had learned anything about the product of gold in Otago.