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Lawyer's Head is a low spur, running from the hills at the back of 



Anderson's Bay out to sea a short way, and is composed of a hard black basaltic 

 rock at the bottom, and a softish reddish-coloured rock at the top. Before 

 leaving Lawyer's Head, however, it is worth while observing that there is no 

 such accumulation of sand here as there is at the corresponding end of Green 

 Island beach. The cause is not difficult to find. The south side of the Head 

 is a long gentle slope, offering little resistance to the wind, which sweeps up 

 with great force at times, ranging the sand in long irregular ridges parallel to 

 its course, and carrying a great proportion over the Head to the other side, 

 where it lies in a steep bank against the precipice, accumulating, until it is 

 carried off by the first high tide, and distributed over the rest of the beach. 

 The phenomena presented on Tomahawk Beach are very much the same as 

 those already described. The sand is gradually travelling northwards, and 

 covering all the space between the lagoon and the ocean, rising over the low 

 hill in the middle of the beach, and even finding its way into the lower part 

 of the Tomahawk Valley. From this part northward, the coast line is 

 composed for a long distance of a line of high shelving cliffs, running up to a 

 height of 700 or 800 feet, and no sand is met with imtil the Sandfly Bay 

 District is reached, where a line of sand hills bounds the beach. At the 

 extremity of this beach stands that very singular feature in the scenery of the 

 district — Sandymount— which is partly covered with patches of moving sand, 

 but as the writer has never had an ojDportunity of travelling over this part of 

 the coast, he will reserve his remarks on Sandymount until he has done so. 



North of Sandymount lies that very beautiful locality. Hooper's Inlet, 

 which possesses, in common with all the harbours on this coast the writer has 

 seen, the fact of having on the right or starboard side, as you run in, a sand 

 bank or spit ; on the left, or port side, rocks, more or less high. Oamaru, 

 Kakanui, Waikouaiti, Blueskin, Piirakanui, Otago, Papanui, all present the 

 same appearance as Hooper's on entering. In a strong south-westei-, the writer 

 has seen the sand flying from the shoulders of Sandymount in thick clouds, 

 which are deposited on the beach at the entrance to the Inlet. The line 

 of sand hills continues here for aboiit a mile, when the bold promon- 

 tory of Cape Saunders is met with. Of course there is no sand there, the 

 coast being again a line of perpendicular rocks all the way round the forest- 

 covered Mount Charles, to the entrance of Papanui Inlet. About a mile and 

 a half from the ocean, at Hooper's, however, the distance between the two 

 inlets is less than half a mile from high-water mark to high- water mark. 

 Taking our way across this neck, and then across the wet flat of Papanui, of 

 course at low tide, it is easy to arrive at the sand banks on the Wickliffe Bay side. 



Proceeding towards the ocean, we find two distinct series of dunes, one of 

 a much older date than the other, covered with green turf, while the one 

 nearest the sea is only the usual loose drifting sand. The beach at Wickliffe 



2 M 



