J. Harding. — On the District of Te Aoroa. 337 



land was once grand kauri forest : this is proved by the quan- 

 tity of kauri-gum found on it. It has been worked as a gum- 

 field — sometimes as many as two hundred men digging on it 

 at one thne — for the last thirty years (so I have been told by 

 old residents), and yet it still yields a good quantity. 



The cliffs on the coast show the same drift-sand nature 

 down to sea-level. They also show that many great changes 

 have taken place, and that the late kauri forest was not the 

 first, for in the cliffs are several beds of good lignite, divided 

 from each other by thick beds of drift-sand. This lignite con- 

 tains many kauri-trees and fossil gum (ambrit). 



The higher hills all have remains of old pas on the tops, 

 and you can learn the history of them from the Maoris ; but 

 since my sons have had the place the remains of a very large 

 old pa have come to light, of which the oldest natives say 

 they have never heard. There are indications that the whole 

 has been covered with forest, though not kauri, for kauri does 

 not appear to have grown on the present coast-hills since the 

 days of that pa. 



When I bought the property this part was covered with a 

 dense growth of fern, tutu, and scrub. This was burnt off, 

 exposing the surface to the west winds, which removed the 

 surface vegetable soil, then the sand, thus exposing bit by bit 

 the ground-plan of a pa. It is on a large fiat, and the process 

 of uncovering is still going on. After a heavy gale my sons 

 often find stone axes and pieces of stone, a kind of flint ; but 

 I have not seen any remains of wooden articles. 



At one place, known as Mount Wesley (an old Wesleyan 

 mission-station), the sandstone hills reach from the coast to 

 the bank of the Wahoa, and one seam of the lignite crops out 

 and forms a small reef in the river near the bank. 



One strange feature of the country is the presence of a 

 layer of blue clay or mud in a liquid state at varying depths. 

 This mud was first found by my son in sinking a hole for a 

 strainer-post. He hit the seam, and it ran over the top of the 

 hole ; and, though that is some nine years ago, it still runs at 

 times, and has formed a quagmire about the place in which 

 he has had many sheep smothered till he fenced it round. 

 Eecently a country road was cut through the hill at Mount 

 Wesley. As the work proceeded one of my sons told the con- 

 tractor that he was getting very near this mud, and cautioned 

 him to alter his line slightly. The contractor laughed, and 

 asked where mud was to come from on a hill ; but a few more 

 strokes of the pick hit the seam, and out flowed the mud, and 

 the place had to be sheet-piled, and that only partly stopped 

 the outflow. It was running along the side of the road when 

 I was there a few weeks since. This mud or clay is just like 

 what the early Wellington settlers used to call earthquake 



