Tkavees. — On the great Floods of Feh'uary, 1868. 85 



even the slightest trace of the shingle and other materials which had pre- 

 viously lain in them. It is impossible to convey an idea of the extraor- 

 dinary quantity of timber piled upon the surface of the plains, and that, 

 too, in positions which had not, before this flood, presented any trace of 

 having been covered with water since that of the lake had been drained from 

 it. It must be borne in mind, moreover, that the timber thus left on the 

 surface of the plain could only have been a mere fraction of the total quan- 

 tity brought down by the rivers, the greater proportion having been carried 

 out to sea. 



At the point where the waters of the Pahau joined those of the Hurunui, 

 they were banked up to the height of upwards of thirty-five feet, and a bed 

 of silt was deposited varying in depth from a few inches to upwards of ten 

 or twelve feet (according, of course, to the depth of the banked-up water), 

 and covering an area of several hundred acres. This silt-bed remained so 

 soft for many months after the subsidence of the waters, immediately below 

 the dry crust which formed on its surface, that cattle which got on to it 

 from the bank above, attracted by the young grass which soon grew upon 

 it, sank into it and were smothered. A similar but smaller bed of silt was 

 formed at the confluence of the Hanmer with the Waiau-ua, and several 

 months after it had been uncovered, a pack-horse, which I was driving, was 

 very nearly bogged in attempting to cross it. The larger part of the great 

 bed of silt, formed at the confluence of the Pahau and the Hurunui, remains 

 to this day, and is not exposed to removal by the ordinary action of those 

 rivers, but no such bed existed prior to the occurrence of the flood of 

 February, 1868. 



The next striking result of this flood was one which especially affected 

 the surfaces of the hills in the Waiau-ua Gorge, and was indeed noticeable, 

 though in a less remarkable degree, all over the surrounding country. 

 These hills were scarred by innumerable small isolated slips, evidently 

 caused by the sudden bursting from points on their sides of accumulations 

 of water which had suddenly found its way between the surface-soil and the 

 solid ground below. An occasional scar of the same kind is seen on the 

 mountain sides all over New Zealand, but the extent to which this process 

 had taken place as the result of the great flood in question, was such as to 

 create a marked and by no means agreeable feature in the landscape. I 

 believe I am not exaggerating when I say that, to the eye at all events, 

 not less than one-twentieth part of the surface of a large proportion of the 

 hills had been rendered useless by these peculiar slips, for as the surfaces 

 exposed by them consist almost exclusively of the underlying rock, they 

 are, and are likely to remain for ages to come, completely destitute of 

 vegetation, 



