Travers.—On the great Floods of February, 1868. 87 
the line of road along the main terrace, in order to permit the wool-drays 
to pass over across the beds of these streams in places which had pre- 
viously been forded without the slightest trouble. In several places, more- 
over, where the old channels had proved insufficient to carry the enormous 
quantity of flood-waters suddenly poured into them, these had burst over 
their banks and cut subsidiary channels through the gravels of the main 
terrace down to the solid rock on which they rest, and had then fallen in 
cascades into the great river below. Now I submit, that if any such flood 
as that of February, 1868, had occurred in this locality since these several 
gravel terraces had been formed, it must have left marks similar to those 
which I have described, marks which, looked upon from a geological point 
of view, are practically indelible ; and the non-existence of such marks in 
any part of the gorge prior to the occurrence of the flood in question, is 
sufficient to indicate that no such flood had taken place since the river had 
flowed at the foot of the terraces fronting the lateral valleys. 
It is not necessary that I should specially notice the effects of the flood in 
the valley of the Clarence on the Upper Waiau-ua. Though palpable enough, 
they were not of a class to afford strong evidence of its being unprecedented 
in extent, for both these localities are high above sea-level, are very rugged 
and bare, and the marks left were not sufficiently distinctive to require 
special notice. 
In the gorge of the Wairau the case was different. There, as before 
observed, the river flowed for miles over a bed filled with huge boulders, 
but the immediate effect of the tremendous rainfall referred to had been, 
that all the loose angular detritus previously lying in the beds of the 
lateral torrents was washed out of them, forming, in some instances, 
enormous mounds, the bases of which were cut away by the waters of the 
main river, the effect being that the interstices between the boulders in its 
bed were filled up, for many miles of its course, changing the surface of 
this bed from one of great ruggedness to the smoothness of a macadamized 
road, and giving to the river the appearance of a beautiful purling stream 
instead of that of an impetuous brawling torrent. In process of time the 
major portion of the small stuff thus distributed over the bed of the river 
will be removed, but when I last passed through the gorge, eight years after 
the occurrence of the flood in question, the places where I forded the river 
still retained the even smoothness which had followed from the great flood. 
Such are the principal grounds upon which I have based the opinion 
expressed in the earlier part of this paper, and I have little doubt that, had I 
been able to devote time to a more extended examination of the district in 
which my observations were made, I should have found abundant additional 
evidence in support of it, I am aware of the danger of drawing general 
