exist, quite equal to much land in the North Island, that amply repays the capital invested. The opening of the Okarito-Bowen Road will, no doubt, cause more land to be taken up for bonâ fide settlement. Communication will then be of a more certain character, and travellers will be enabled to avoid the difficulties and dangers of the rivers and rocky bluffs on the coast line. One of the most interesting sights in New Zealand, the Franz Josef Glacier, will then attract more visitors to its beautiful scenery and wondrous masses of ice and snow. In what are generally known as the “early days,” Okarito was a flourishing township, and the diggings on the various beaches north and south of it, were swarming with busy workers, washing from the sands the particles of gold brought down by the rivers from the hills ages ago, and since divided into small particles now found. The geology and mineralogy of the hill-country, towards the main range at the back of the district, is not known with accuracy, owing to the difficulties of penetrating the intervening bush. As far as can be judged from the materials composing the terraces which form the undulating ground between the hills and the sea, a number of valuable minerals are stored in this part of the country, and it is not too much to express an opinion that, when fully explored, the ranges south of Mount Tyndall will prove to be the Cornwall of New Zealand. Owing to the deficiency of good liarbours on this part of the West Coast, it may be very long before a trade can be established. Hitherto the only mineral sought for has been gold, and many are the places in which it has been found—in fact, it never having been found in the river Waitaki (or Waitangi) renders it a remarkable river, running as it does through the same kind of country, and having rivers and creeks on each side of it that have yielded heavy amounts of gold. I have not the opportunity of examining a return of the total amount of gold procured in the district, but it must be very large, as the different diggings at the Forks, the Three-Mile and Four-Mile Beaches, the Waio and Wateroa rivers and McDonald's Creek, have proved at one time or another very rich. Very few are now working on the beaches, for, though far from being exhausted, the sand shifts so much with every gale of wind and heavy sea, that it mixes the sand from which the gold has been taken with that still containing the metal. Thus to extract the gold requires more labour than previously, as much sand has to be washed that has already been impoverished. Very curious and beautiful this black sand looks under the low powers of a microscope, heaps of rubies and diamonds appear to be mixed with “patines of fine gold” and stones of less brightness and beauty, with here and there thin laminæ of micea and pearly-looking quarts. Unfortunately for Okarito no reefs have yet been found showing any