to descend a steep slope covered with it, did so by lying down and rolling on the matted surface. He likened it to a wire-mattress--with a broken wire sticking up here and there. In addition to their botanical fame, the Aucklands have a sinister renown among seafaring men. Nature has provided the group with nearly a dozen good harbours. Two among these, Port Ross and Carnley Harbour, have found champions enthusiastic enough to style them the finest seaports in the world. Yet, despite this abundance of shelter, the isles are infamous as the scene of shipwrecks. They are in the track of Australian ships making for Cape Horn by passing to the south of New Zealand. In trying to give a wide berth to the Snares, captains sometimes go perilously near the Aucklands. To go no further back, eight wrecks upon them have been recorded during the last forty-five years; while earlier, in 1845, there are said to have been three in one year. The excellent harbours, unluckily, open towards the east; the ships running before the westerly winds are dashed against the terrible walls of rock which make the windward face of the group. The survivors find themselves on desolate and inclement shores hundreds of miles from humanity. Many are the tales of their sufferings. Even now, though the Government of New Zealand keeps up two well-stocked depôts of food and clothing there, and despatches a steamer to search for castaways once or twice a year, we still read of catastrophes followed by prolonged misery. Five men from a crew of the _Grafton_, lost in 1864, spent no less than eighteen months on the islands. At length they patched up the ship’s pinnace sufficiently to carry three of them to Stewart’s Island, where they crept into Port Adventure in the last stage of exhaustion. The two comrades they had left behind were at once sent for and brought away. Less lucky were four sailors who, after the wreck of the _General Grant_, two years later, tried to repeat the feat of a boat-voyage to Stewart Island. They were lost on the way. Indeed, of eighty-three poor souls cast away with the _General Grant_, only ten were ultimately rescued, after spending a forlorn six months on the isles. The case of the _General Grant_ was especially noteworthy. She did not run blindly against the cliffs in a tempest, but spent hours tacking on and off the western coast in ordinary weather. Finally, she found her way into a cave, where she went down with most of those on board her. At least £30,000 in gold went with her, and in the effort to find the wreck and recover the money, the cutter _Daphne_ was afterwards cast away, with the loss of six lives more.