Sutherland. — On Discoveries near Milford Sound. 457 



and forms a salt-water lake, divided into two parts by a shingle bar, dry at 

 low water. The lower part has its greatest length across the valley, being 

 better than a mile in this direction, and about half a mile in breadth from 

 the outlet to the shingle bar dividing it from the upper part of the lake. In 

 this basin the depth of water is very considerable, some twenty fathoms. 



" The shingle bar, dividing the lake into two parts, and dry at low water, 

 is about half a mile wide at low water ; no river connects the two parts of 

 the lake, but the water from the upper part flows over or percolates through 

 the shingle, so that no principal stream is formed. 



" Beyond this the upper part of the lake, better than a mile in width, 

 extends to the eastward a distance of six miles, and is bounded on the 

 north side by precipitous mountains not quite so nearly vertical as in 

 Milford Sound. On its southern side the lake has a fringe of flat land, 

 three quarters of a mile wide, between it and the mountains, which are less 

 abrupt than on the northern side of the lake, saving towards its upper end, 

 where they are equally so. At its upper end the lake is narrowed to less 

 •than half its greatest width, and there receives two rivers coming from the 

 north-east and south-east respectively, much as the Cleddau and Arthur 

 rivers enter Milford Sound. 



" Near their entrance into the lake these rivers are each about a chain 

 in width, and though the weather was fine and the rivers low, they were 

 not fordable when I saw them. That coming from the north-east has a 

 valley about a quarter of a mile in width, and for a mile this has a mode- 

 rate fall, beyond which it has a higher slope, and appears to become a 

 rugged mountain valley, although the mountains on either side are not 

 remarkably abrupt. 



" The stream falling into the lake on the south side is rather the largest 

 of the two. This flows over a rough bouldery bed in a valley considerably 

 less than a quarter of a mile wide, which terminates half a mile from the 

 lake, beyond which the river flows in a tremendous ravine, not more than 

 two or three chains in width, whose vertical sides rise to a height of 1,500 

 or 2,000 feet. 



" By these two rivers a small delta has been reclaimed from the upper 

 part of the lake ; and off the mouth of the northern river a small island of 

 shingle is dry at high water. From the sea into the lower part of the lake 

 the tide runs in with a rate of five knots, and over the shingle bar at the 

 rate of three knots an hour. 



" The lake abounds with fish in the lower basin, and in the lower part 

 of the upper, though none were caught at its upper end, and following 

 them there is no scarcity of sharks, which infest the tidal river and the lake 

 wherever other fish are found. 



