12 



CHAPTER III. 



THE LAKES. 



EXAMINATION of the general physical features of the run has shown a 

 series of parallel hill chains running north and south. Traversing the 

 run from its inland boundary, the reader has crossed them one by one 

 and seen the comb formation, though becoming less and less marked in 

 height, persist through the west and throughout the trough of the run. 

 A continuity of these features might have been looked for, especially as 

 after a brief interruption they reappear in eastern Tutira. Instead we 

 come upon a sheet of water still, after the depositions of centuries of 

 alluvium, ninety feet in depth, two miles in length, and half a mile in 

 width. In lieu of the normal narrow gorge there occur a series of 

 immense hollows, one of which, the " big " swamp, is already filled with 

 alluvium; whilst others still exist as lakes Tutira, Waikopiro, and 

 Orakai. 



It is at the base of the Newton range, where the conglomerates of 

 the central run cease and the limestones of eastern Tutira begin, that 

 this change in the plan of the run, this interpolation of a new pattern, 

 occurs. Its presence is an anomaly ; it is an extraneous feature to the 

 great general scheme of the station ; it can, I think, be accounted for 

 only by processes unlike any yet considered. 



Hollows where waters lie may be attributed to erosion, to lodgment 

 of water in craters, to the accumulation of material forming barriers or 

 dams, by subsidence of the crust of the earth. 



Except the last, that of erosion is the only theory which might at 

 first seem to fit the facts. The great trough passing through the centre 

 of Tutira, a trough extending scores of miles north and south of the 

 station, marked throughout by extensive beds of conglomerate and 

 sandstone, has been described. These deposits, sharply separated from 



