E. DoBSOK. — State of Applied Science in Canterhurj/. 137 



The engineering works upon tliis line are of a very varied nature. In 

 some places the cliffs are scarfed out for a portion of the width of the road, 

 the remainder being carried on timber brackets, in the fashion of Trajan's 

 celebrated road on the bank of the Danube ; in others, the line is carried 

 across ravines on embankments faced with walls made of timber cribbing, 

 filled with blocks of stone. 



The fords in the rivers have been protected by wing dams formed of 

 large trees backed with boulders ; whilst in Inany places the mountain 

 torrents have been made passable by building timber weirs across them, and 

 filling up their beds to a uniform level with stones and gravel. Through 

 the swampy forest the ground has been drained and fascined for many 

 miles, whilst the whole length of the road has been thoroughly metalled. 

 Amongst the bridges, .that over the Taipo, 270 feet long, built upon piles, 

 with steel shoes, driven into a mass of granite boulders, deserves mention 

 as being a difficult work successfully executed, and which has, up to the 

 present time, resisted the heaviest fl.oods, although the stream has been at 

 times blocked with drift timber from bank to bank. 



The explorations of Dr. Haast at the head-waters of the Molyneux, the 

 Waitaki, the Eangitata, and the Eakaia, and those of the Provincial Engineer 

 iu the upper vaUey of the "Waimakariri, have fully established the fact that 

 throughout the entire length of the province there are only three real 

 passes, viz., the Hurunui Saddle, dividing the sources of the Hurunui and 

 Teremakau ; Haast's Pass, at the head of Lake Wanaka, which leads over a 

 very low saddle into the valley of the Haast Hiver, which falls into the sea 

 near Jackson Bay; and Arthur's Pass, which is nothing more than a great 

 fissure, running in a tolerably direct Kne from the valley of the Waimakariri 

 to that of the Teremakau. The so-called North E,akaia Pass has no real claim 

 to the title, its eastern face being simply a wall rising abruptly from the valley 

 to a height of 1,500 feet, and being quite impracticable for horses or cattle, 

 besides being at so great an elevation as to be buried deep in snow during 

 eight months in the year. An inspection of a good map of the j^rovince 

 will help to explain this absence of passes throughout so great a distance. 

 The rocks comprising the central chain have at a very early period been 

 crumpled up into huge folds, the upper portions of which have been denuded, 

 leaving the remaining portions of the strata standing up in vertical or highly 

 inclined positions, the axis of the foldings having a tolerably uniform bearing 

 ofKI^.E. 



Xow, it will be seen, on looking at the map, that the central chain ex- 

 hibits two distinct systems of valleys, the one radiating from a common 

 centre situated about fifty miles north of Mount Darwin, which includes 

 all the rivers from the north to the south of the province, giving^ the idea 

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