FIJI-NEW ZEALAND EXPEDITION 315 
from the harbor by a considerable area of ground made by filling 
in the shallower water of the harbor. This new ground has be- 
come the source of considerable revenue to the Harbor Board, 
since on it are built many of the city’s fine business blocks. The 
residence district is spread over a series of steep-sided hills which 
rise rather abruptly from the strip of shore on which is built the 
business district. This hilly situation has required the develop- 
ment of interesting engineering undertakings in connection with 
city water supply, sewage disposal, tunnels for roads and railways, 
cable tramways, and many other features. A very fine wharf of 
reinforced concrete, a patent slip for vessels, and many other 
harbor developments are worthy of notice. 
To the geologist, the most interesting feature of Wellington is 
its famous land-locked harbor and its origin. The harbor, known 
as Port Nicholson, is a body of water with an area of twenty-five 
to thirty square miles whose maximum depth is about one hundred 
feet. It is entered through a neck four or five miles long and 
but. one mile wide at its narrowest point. On all but one side it 
has many sheltered bays, of which Lambton Harbor and Evans 
Bay, about which Wellington is built, are the finest. The total 
shoreline inside of Point Dorsett is here estimated at fully forty 
miles. There is but one island of any consequence within it. It 
has been frequently said that all the navies of the world could 
easily anchor in Port Nicholson and the statement is fully justi- 
fied. 
Port Nicholson is the result of local subsidence, the northwest 
side of the depression being a fault scarp and almost a straight 
line. The history of the movements and the development of the 
resulting shore features have been worked out so masterfully and 
in such elaborate detail in several papers by Doctor Cotton of 
Victoria College that only the more apparent features are noted 
here. 
The city of Wellington is located along the southwest shore of 
the depression, and the southwest end of the fault dies out in the 
hills back of the city, while its northeast extremity extends far up 
the Hutt valley. The embayed cliffs along the southeast shore of 
Port Nicholson converge toward the fault scarp at such an angle 
as to intercept it at Upper Hutt or thereabout some eight or ten 
miles above the upper end of the harbor. This narrow triangular 
fault valley with its apex at Upper Hutt and its base at Petone 
