"We were urged to stop at Queenstown and see the mining operations in the neighborhood, but time did not permit us to do so, and we returned to Invercargill as quickly as the railway and steamboat could carry us. Queenstown is one of the mining centres of the Otago goldfields, which we have already mentioned, and has had the usual ups and downs of mining life. The Otago mines cover a wide extent of country, and as much of the region in which they lie is agricultural, living is cheaper here than in most other mining regions.
"A good many Chinese are engaged in mining in the New Zealand gold-fields, and we were told that in one place—Orepuki—there was a mining population of four hundred Chinese that subscribed £100 ($500) towards building a Presbyterian church, the total cost being less than a thousand dollars. And yet I presume there are white men in Orepuki who would call one of their Mongolian neighbors a 'heathen Chinee!' Near Dunedin and other places, as well as in the neighborhood of most of the Australian cities, the market-gardening is largely managed by the Chinese. They seem to have almost a monopoly of this business, and we were told that no European could successfully compete with them when they went at it in earnest."
ON THE SHORE OF THE LAKE.
