84 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 
rugged masses to the height of three or four thousand feet; numerous 
torrents flow into it from lateral gorges and ravines, helping to swell the 
volume of the main river, and they bring down, even in ordinary floods, great 
quantities of angular detritus. But the beds of these lateral streams were, 
as arule, prior to the floods of February, 1868, much encumbered with 
loose rock and other material not liable to be removed even by the heaviest 
ordinary floods. The bed of the main river, in its course through the gorge, 
was filled with huge smooth boulders, which made it difficult to ford it even 
when low, and dangerous even when moderately swollen, its waters then 
rushing over their rough bed with great force and impetuosity. In this gorge, 
also, the marks left by the great flood of 1868 were most singular and 
instructive, and I will now proceed to mention such of those marks along 
the line of country which I have described as appear to me to afford 
evidence of the unprecedented character of that flood. 
The first thing which struck me was the enormous quantity of water- 
borne timber which was lodged upon the surface of the Hurunui Plain, 
every part of it which had been reached by the flood-waters being strewed 
with such timber in the most extraordinary manner. The waters of the 
various rivers which ran through it appeared to have risen to an incredible 
height, so much so indeed that a very large part of it must, when the 
waters were at their highest, have presented the appearance of a vast lake. 
I was told, moreover, by a person who stood on the terrace above the 
Hurunui, so as to command a view of the line of the ordinary channel of 
the river, that the waters in that line appeared to run at a height of from 
three to four feet greater than the general level of the water spread over the 
plain, and that the roar of the shingle which was being carried down was 
like that of distant thunder. As the waters subsided enormous quantities 
of timber were left upon the level ground over which they had spread, and 
it was curious to see the singular regularity with which the drifted logs 
were piled up, often to the height of several feet, giving to the whole an 
absolutely artificial appearance. The Pahau, which in its ordinary flow is 
scarcely more than a brook, and which even in ordinary floods is rarely 
more than two or three hundred yards broad, must, during the flood in 
question, have been upwards of two miles wide. Like the Hurunui, and 
upon a scarcely less scale, it deposited upon the surface of the upper plain 
immense quantities of timber built up in precisely the same manner. I was 
informed by shepherds and stockmen well acquainted with the forest tracts 
on the surrounding mountains, that every atom of fallen timber had been 
washed out of the innumerable gullies and ravines by which their slopes are 
furrowed, and that the beds of all the streams which flowed in them ap- 
peared to have been cleaned out to the very rock, few of them retaining 
