Arrival in New Zealand.

He transferred to the New Zealand steamer at Melbourne, landed at Bluff, and journeyed thence to Queenstown. There he found the conditions ideal for his rest cure. The mountain air was clear and invigorating, and the surrounding scenery aroused his latent powers of admiration. While idling in the pleasant shade of the trees on the lake front he made the acquantince of some old-time diggers, and heard from them of the Shot-over and Kawarau, the Cromwell Gorge, and the wonderful beaches of the Moly-neux, of the Dunstan and Gabriel's Gully, and the sluicing at the Bluespur and Waitahuna. He decided to make the trip by coach through this wonderful region, a course which involved lightening his luggage, so he arranged for the Lake Wakatipu Steam Navigation Company to take his trunk to Kingston, and thence consign it at goods rates to Dunedin.

The train was waiting on the wharf at Kingston when the steamer conveying the trunk arrived there, and the guard, surveying the luggage to be loaded on his train, directed that the big trunk be landed first, so that it could be stowed at the back end of his van out of the way of intermediate movements. He had it loaded before the mate, having attended to his duties on the steamer, came ashore and informed him that the trunk was booked at goods rates. The guard decided that one handling was enough at that stage, and that he would take the trunk through to Gore Junction. The train from Inver-cargill was well-filled when it arrived at Gore, and the Main Line guard looked askance at the big trunk. He said he could not do with that “Noah's Ark” in the van doorway all the way to Dunedin, but on learning that it was booked through the goods he advised the station clerk to keep it for the through truck next morning, and handed him back the waybill with a sigh of relief. But the Gore platform staff, page 45 who did not want the trunk on their hands, suggested that room might be made for it in a truck of theatrical luggage on the front of the train. Willing hands did a little restowing, and the trunk was got away in the truck. After the train had gone the clerk enquired for the trunk, and finding it had been despatched, enclosed the waybill, without comment, to Dunedin Goods. Next morning the cartage contractor at Dunedin carted the “quantity of theatrical luggage” (including the trunk) up to the theatre. The waybill, when it reached Dunedin, showed the truck as having been loaded in the van, but it was not at the passenger station. Enquiry at Gore resulted in tracing it to the theatre, and the contractor was directed to bring it back to the railway.