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By the Quiet Waters of Wakatipu.
An Ideal Holiday Resort.

(By “Tourist.”)

In the calm peace of Queenstown's cradled beauty, in a setting of mountain and lake, exquisite in contour and overwhelmingly impressive in grandeur, there is found every desirable holiday pleasure.

You may walk by the lake, in the clear sunshine of a peaceful morning, to the jetty where the big trout leap for minced meat and the little ducks dive for bread. You may steam to the head of the lake and watch from the deck the unfolding of soul-stirring panoramas, where the scenic beauty of sheltered coves and mountain ravines and forest verdure charm and inspire the spirit. You may motor through the precipitous passes of the Skipper's drive up the route of the treacherous Shotover, or down to the old-world restfulness, the placid content of Maestown and Arrowtown—dreaming, in quiet stillness, of those bustling gold-mining days of last century. You may tramp in the early morning to the top of Ben Lomond, or fish the banks of the Kawarau below the ramparts of that now-famous Kawarau Dam; or you may shop in the heart of Queens-town for local curios in many small bazaars of quaint old-worldness that cater for the desires of memento-hunting tourists. In the season there is no fruit more pleasing than the strawberries picked in the gardens adjacent to the township, and the Peninsula Park has the loveliest of gardens, looking out through lazy tree fronds in both directions over the blue of Lake Wakatipu. Here tennis and bowls are played, and an amazing variety of native trees grow in a cultivated luxuriance.

Kinloch and Glenorchy, the townships at the lake head are the starting places for many very wonderful alpine expeditions. “Grandest of all the peaks in the Wakatipu country,” writes Mr. James Cowan, “is Mt. Earnslaw, and here, at Glenorchy, one is reminded that that climbing pioneer, the Rev. W. G. Green, with his two Swiss guides and two other companions, set out for the ascent of the eastern arete of Earnslaw in 1882. But few people want to tackle such a giant of the icy Alps. Most of us are content with easier jaunts, and, of course, everyone wants to see Paradise. That elysian spot is more readily reached than the stranger would imagine, it is only ten miles or so away.

“The Rees Valley and the Lennox Falls make another expedition of unusual charm—a river of utter peace—except in the time of floods—a tussock plain shut in by long shouldering slants of ranges, Earnslaw's shining glaciers, and grand old forests hanging on its mountain side. And water-falls—they are so many in this land of streams that a cascade has to be of a beauty almost indescribable in words to be singled out for mention over the others. Mere photographs are inadequate for the proper picturing of this country; even an artist's brush is not altogether satisfying.”

“I always come here in the spring time, to get fit for the Christmas rush, and I always come up in the autumn—to get over it!” In these words one wise business man explained both the healing virtues of Queenstown and his own unfailing youthfulness. For this place of heartsease has its clientele of regular visitors who have tried elsewhere but found nothing quite so good.

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