s and making their visit agreeable in all that conduces to
their domestic comfort.

Within about seventy-five miles of Dunedin are some of the most
productive gold-fields in the country. Gabriel's Gulch, so called, has
proved to be a mint of the precious metal so rich that all the tailings
of the diggings which have been once worked at a handsome profit, are
just being submitted to a second and more scientific process in order to
obtain the gold which is known still to remain in them. The amount of
these tailings in gross weight is doubtless hundreds of thousands of
tons; what percentage of gold to the ton will be realized, remains to be
seen. An interested party informed us that it was confidently expected
that more profit would be obtained by this second treatment than had
been realized by the first. Some average samples sent to England for
scientific treatment yielded at the rate of two ounces and one half of
gold to the ton of tailings. If even two ounces can be realized, these
diggings of Gabriel's Gulch will prove a Bonanza indeed.

New Zealand in proportion is nearly as rich in gold deposits as is
Australia, and the precious metal is found under very nearly the same
conditions; that is, in quartz reefs and in alluvial deposits. Much gold
has been found here in what are termed pockets, under bowlders and large
stones that lie on the sandy beach of the west coast. This gold is
popularly believed to have been washed up out of the sea in heavy
weather; but undoubtedly it was first washed down from the mountains by
the rivers, and deposited along the shore. Official returns show that
New Zealand has produced over fifty million pounds sterling in gold, or
two hundred and fifty million dollars, since its first discovery there.
Besides Europeans there are several thousand Chinese engaged in mining
for gold; and here as in Australia these Asiatics work upon such claims
and such tailings as have been abandoned by others.

Fern-trees abound in and about Dunedin, often growing to a height of
thirty feet, with noble coronals of leaves,--far more effective and
graceful than the fan-palm which is seen in such abundance at Singapore,
Penang, and in Equatorial regions. The fuchsias grow to mammoth
proportions and to a giant height here. We have never seen this favorite
so large elsewhere, with one exception,--in the Summer Gardens of St.
Petersburg, where an exotic plant of this beautiful flowering shrub had
grown to the size o