84 Transactions. — Miscellaneous, 



rugged masses to the height of three or four thousand feet; numerous 

 torrents flow into it from lateral gorges and ravines, helping to swell the 

 volume of the main river, and they bring down, even in ordinary floods, great 

 quantities of angular detritus. But the beds of these lateral streams were, 

 as a rule, prior to the floods of February, 1868, much encumbered with 

 loose rock and other material not liable to be removed even by the heaviest 

 ordinary floods. The bed of the main river, in its course through the gorge, 

 was filled with huge smooth boulders, which made it dif&cult to ford it even 

 when low, and dangerous even when moderately swollen, its waters then 

 rushing over their rough bed with great force and impetuosity. In this gorge, 

 also, the marks left by the great flood of 1868 were most singular and 

 instructive, and I will now proceed to mention such of those marks along 

 the line of country which I have described as appear to me to afford 

 evidence of the unprecedented character of that flood. 



The first thing which struck me was the enormous quantity of water- 

 borne timber which was lodged upon the surface of the Hurunui Plain, 

 every part of it which had been reached by the flood-waters being strewed 

 with such timber in the most extraordinary manner. The waters of the 

 various rivers which ran through it appeared to have risen to an incredible 

 height, so much so indeed that a very large part of it must, when the 

 waters were at their highest, have presented the appearance of a vast lake. 

 I was told, moreover, by a person who stood on the terrace above the 

 Hurunui, so as to command a view of the line of the ordinary channel of 

 the river, that the waters in that line appeared to run at a height of from 

 three to four feet greater than the general level of the water spread over the 

 plain, and that the roar of the shingle which was being carried down was 

 like that of distant thunder. As the waters subsided enormous quantities 

 of timber were left upon the level ground over which' they had spread, and 

 it was curious to see the singular regularity with which the drifted logs 

 were piled up, often to the height of several feet, giving to the whole an 

 absolutely artificial appearance. The Pahau, which in its ordinary flow is 

 scarcely more than a brook, and which even in ordinary floods is rarely 

 more than two or three hundred yards broad, must, during the flood in 

 question, have been upwards of two miles wide. Like the Hurunui, and 

 upon a scarcely less scale, it deposited upon the surface of the upper plain 

 immense quantities of timber built up in precisely the same manner. I was 

 informed by shepherds and stockmen well acquainted with the forest tracts 

 on the surrounding mountains, that every atom of fallen timber had been 

 washed out of the innumerable gullies and ravines by which their slopes are 

 furrowed, and that the beds of all the streams which flowed in them ap- 

 peared to have been cleaned out to the very rock, few of them retaining 



