A much more complicated question is the route which the traveller should follow on landing. The districts for deer-shooting are well known. Indeed, the sportsman need have no difficulty in mapping out a course for himself. All will depend on the season of the year and the special game he is after. Any one interested in the progress of settlement and colonisation may be recommended to pass through the farming district between the Waiau River in Southland and the river of the same name which runs into the sea about sixty miles north of Christchurch. Next he should make a journey from Wellington to New Plymouth, along the south-west coast of New Zealand, and again from Wellington to Napier, threading the districts of Wairarapa, the Seventy Mile Bush, and Hawke’s Bay. The city of Auckland and its neighbourhood, and the valley of the Waikato River also, he should not miss. [Illustration: THE OTIRA GORGE] Let me suppose, however, that what the tourist wants is rather the wilderness and its scenery than prosaic evidence of the work of subduing the one and wrecking the other. His route then will very much depend on the port that is his starting-point. Should he land at Bluff Harbour he will find himself within easy striking distance of the Otago mountain lakes, all of which are worth a visit, while one of them, Manapouri, is perhaps as romantic a piece of wild lake scenery as the earth has to show. The sounds or fiords of the south-west coast can be comfortably reached by excursion steamer in the autumn. The tougher stamp of pedestrian can get to them at other times in the year by following one of the tracks which cross the mountains from the lake district aforesaid to the western coast. The beauty of the route from Te Anau through the Clinton Valley, and by way of the Sutherland Falls to Milford Sound, is unsurpassed in the island. Aorangi, the highest peak of the Southern Alps, and the centre of the chief glaciers, is best approached from Timaru, a seaport on the eastern coast a hundred and twelve miles south of Christchurch. Any one, however, who is able to travel on horseback may be promised a rich reward if he follows the west coast, southward from the town of Hokitika, and passes between Aorangi and the sea, on that side. Between Hokitika and the Canterbury Plains the journey by rail and coach is for half its distance a succession of beautiful sights, the finest of which is found in the deep gorge of the Otira River, into which the traveller plunges on the western side of the dividing range. Inferior, but well worth seeing, is the gorge of the Buller River, to be seen by those who make the coach journey from Westport to Nelson. Nelson itself is finely placed at the inner end of the grand arc of Blind Bay. The drive thence to Picton on Queen Charlotte Sound, passing on the way through Havelock and the Rai Valley, has charming points of view.