November 5, 1895

This train-express goes twenty and one-half miles an hour, schedule time; but it is fast enough, the outlook upon sea and land is so interesting, and the cars so comfortable. They are not English, and not American; they are the Swiss combination of the two. A narrow and railed porch along the side, where a person can walk up and down. A lavatory in each car.
This is progress; this is nineteenth-century spirit. In New Zealand, these fast expresses run twice a week. It is well to know this if you want to be a bird and fly through the country at a 20-mile gait; otherwise you may start on one of the five wrong days, and then you will get a train that can't overtake its own shadow.

Early in the morning, the Mararoa arrived at Bluff, South Island, New Zealand, the country’s southernmost port. Livy and Clara stayed aboard. Sam and Carlyle G. Smythe took a train to Invercargill (pop.10,000). (MTDBD)