Tbavebs. — On the great Moods of February, 1868. 8S 



is precipitated, which, upon the subsidence of the waters, presents the 

 appearance of a bed of soft sandy mud. The Hanmer Plain appears also 

 to be the bed of a former lake which had been gradually emptied by reason 

 of the erosion of the rock in the_ gorge below it. 



Crossing this plain the road leads up a long spur to Jack's Pass, a depres- 

 sion in the mountain ridge on the north side of the plain, through which the 

 vaUey of the Clarence is reached. I need scarcely say, that the scenery in the 

 gorge, andupontheHnes of road over the passes into the Clarence and the Upper 

 Waiau-ua, is very beautiful, but I am compelled to omit any notice of it in 

 this paper as foreign to the subject in hand, although I should like to dwell 

 upon it. It is a curious circumstance that the valley of the Clarence lies 

 but little below the upper level of Jack's Pass, and that from the outlet of 

 Lake Tennyson, for upwards of sixty miles of its course, it lies at an 

 average altitude of 1,400 feet above, though parallel with the valley of the 

 Waiau-ua, the level of Jack's Pass being little less than 3,000 feet above 

 that of the sea. Fowler's Pass, through which the Upper Waiau-ua is 

 reached from the Clarence, is about twenty miles up the valley from Jack's 

 Pass, the saddle being from seven to eight hundred feet above the level of 

 the valley, making the summit of the pass nearly 4,400 feet above sea-level. 

 It is in these localities that the remarkable Alpine vegetation of New Zealand 

 is found in its greatest luxuriance and in its most quaint and striking forms, 

 whilst the air is not only delicious from its mere purity, but is always filled, 

 and especially so in midsummer, with the perfume of many exquisitely 

 scented mountain plants. 



The descent from Fowler's Pass to Lake Guyon is extremely rapid, the 

 track leading through broken rocky gorges, above which the mountains, 

 rugged and bare, rise to an additional height of several thousand feet, the 

 more sheltered spots in their northern aspect being rarely free from snow. 

 The valley of the upper Waiau-ua lies beloY»r Lake Guyon, and was formerly 

 filled by a huge glacier, formed and fed from the snows of the Spenser 

 Mountains, the highest points of which, the Faery Queen, Mount Una, and 

 the Pyramid, attain to the elevation of nearly 10,000 feet above sea- 

 level. Maling's Pass is about eight miles above the outlet of Lake Guyon, 

 and leads to Lake Tennyson, a very beautiful sheet of water now occupying 

 the bed of a great glacier, which formerly descended from the skirts of the 

 Princess Mountain. This lake receives the head waters of the Clarence 

 Eiver. From the eastern side of the lake the track lies over a low saddle 

 to the head of the Wairau, the river which, after passing close to the town 

 of Blenheim, flows into Cloudy Bay. Between the northern side of the 

 saddle and the Rainbow Eiver, the Wairau runs for several miles through a 

 narrow rocky gorge, on each side of which the mountains rise in steep and 



