146 



Transactions. 



rising directly from the lake, is the tussock-clad peak called the Sugar- 

 loaf (4,459 ft.), along whose northern base flows the Waimakariri. In this 

 part of its course this river has an average east-and-west direction, its bed 

 being a broad flat floor covered with shingle from side to side, over which 

 the river wanders in anastomosing or braided streams. It is in places over 

 a mile in width, and only narrows in this locality where the Hawdon forces 

 the main stream over to the south bank against the rocky bluff which termi- 

 nates the ridge to the west of the Cass Eiver. On the northern side of the 



ApproxriTTtACf Direction of 

 PrirteipBl Clacter Sfi-^ants 



Map of the Cass and Adjoining Districts. 



Waimakariri the mountains rise to approximately 6,000 ft., clad with dark- 

 coloured southern-beech forest on their lower slopes, which passes up into 

 subalpino scrub and mountain herb-field and fell-field, and finally into bare 

 rock and loose angular debris with which the summits and adjacent slopes 

 are usually crowned (see Plate XV, fig. 2). These mountains and the Craigie- 

 burn Range to \h% south appear to hem in the country near the Cass, and 

 give it the appearance of being placed in a basin. The origin of this basin 

 is no doubt connected in some way with deformation of the earth's crust, 

 such as faulting and warping ; but the details of the landscape are chiefly 



