TUTIRA 



pass over successive lines of hills till we arrive at the Newton range 

 the easternmost edge of the trough. It too illustrates the prevailing 

 feature, the continuity of top and upright rock rampart facing west, 

 the "back" of the "comb," its cloven spurs sloping towards the east, 

 the "teeth." 



Everywhere, therefore, on Tutira we discover one pattern, one 

 principle, one type of formation dominant; we find furthermore 

 throughout the run narrow " tooth " valleys enclosed by perpendicular 

 wa l] s valleys which may deepen but which never can expand, and 

 out of which over the bulk of the run no water whatsoever visibly 



flows. The precipices con- 

 taining them form what 

 may be called, for conve- 

 nience sake, the dry cliff 

 system of the run. 



Strongly contrasting 

 with it exists another 

 which may be equally well 

 termed the wet cliff sys- 

 tem. Unlike the former, 

 its sculpturing offers no 

 difficulty to the imagina- 

 tion. It has been cut out 

 by processes which are still 



at work. Its streams still chiselling out their beds flow far beneath the 

 surface. Its cliffs, saturated with moisture percolating through the 

 pervious soils above, are from top to bottom feathered with ferns and 

 delicate greenery. There are in fact two conspicuously distinct series 

 of cliff the rock walls of the one dry, bare, and prominent ; the rock 

 walls of the other damp, densely overgrown, and, until closely approached, 

 invisible. 



Besides the boundary rivers named, there are within the compass 

 of the station several streams of lesser volume, also flowing between 

 narrow perpendicular walls ; the only stream, indeed, not imprisoned 

 by precipices during its whole length is the Papakiri, which ends 

 its career in Tutira lake. Every upland lake is a sea to the rivers 

 that feed it ; to the Papakiri the lake is the ocean of its extinction. 

 For the same reason also that the Waikoau curbs the speed of its 

 current and deposits its silt upon approach to the Pacific, the Papakiri 



Blue Duck on Waikoau river. 

 (This and other sketches from photographs taken by H. G.-S. 



