39 



CHAPTER VI. 



SURFACE SLIPS, 



THE deluges that from time to time pass over Tutira have been 

 mentioned. Readers will have, therefore, no difficulty in picturing their 

 effects on steep marl slopes. Although on the station itself there is only 

 a small proportion of land of this type, yet speaking broadly of the 

 " papa " country of the east coast of the North Island, it is being 

 flattened towards the sea by a mighty melting process, most marked 

 and most discernible in the soft marls of Poverty Bay. As, however, 

 it is the history of Tutira I am writing limited as is the acreage 

 affected I shall cull my facts from local sources. 



During heavy rainfalls on eastern Tutira the numerous oozes, leak- 

 ages, and " damps," consequent on alternate bands of marl and lime- 

 stone, become surcharged with water. The supersaturated subsoils burst 

 with their weight of wet, chasms of many feet in depth are created, 

 the hillsides spew forth mud ; under-runners become gulches, or, choked 

 with debris, spill on the hillsides their streams of silt, torn turf, and 

 curious rough-rolled balls of clay. 



Eastern Tutira, indeed, after a violent " buster," appears to have 

 been weeping mud. From the edges of all ancient slips the water- 

 sodden fringes drip with clay ; new red-raw wounds smear the green 

 slopes, scalp-shaped patches detach themselves, slipping downward in 

 slush and turf. Sometimes a whole hillside will wrinkle and slide like 

 snow melting off a roof, its huge corrugations smothering and smashing 

 the wretched sheep, half or wholly burying them in every posture. Some- 

 times a slip rushing down a steep incline will temporarily block the 

 creek below, piling itself up until again washed away, and leaving on 

 the opposite slope, yards above the stream, a curious plaster mark of 

 dirt. Gluey streams, hardly moving faster than glaciers, from whose 



