38 Mr. Garwood Alston.— [ Oct. 28, 
From the best information to be obtained on the spot it appeared 
that in years of greatest dronght the main valley which it was 
proposed to tap would be reasonably certain to give a ten days’ flow 
of water in a properly designed canal, and proposals were made to 
provide for the catch of an average of one hundred million gallons 
per day. The original conception has not been fully carried out, but 
a very fair canal, dignified officially by the name of furrow, is however 
now nearly completed, and it is in illustration of parts of this 
canal that I exhibit the accompanying photographs. 
The river from which the water is taken is of a very flat cross: 
section and is at the intake about a quarter of a mile in breadth ; 
the natural channels draining the valley are insignificant, not 
exceeding two and a half feet in depth and five or six in width. The 
artificial channel cuts through these and is carried at a gradient of 
five or six feet per mile for a distance of about one and a quarter miles 
to the upper end of a collecting and regulating dam where the heavy 
silt derived from the wash through the oversteep channel above is - 
deposited amongst the bushes naturally covering the soil. In the 
dam itself the water is brought to comparative rest and the lighter 
silt is deposited over its bed, about twenty acres, when it is discharged 
into the canal proper through a sluice provided for the purpose of 
regulating its admission. 
For the next four miles the channel is carried over easy country to- 
a point where it was found most convenient to place a relieving sluice 
for use in case a heavy rain should fall and overflood the canal. A 
photograph (No. 1) of this sluice is shown, the waterway there being 
twenty-five feet wide in the furrow, the sluice itself is fourteen feet in- 
width, 
From about a mile below the sluice the canal is carried on the 
side slopes of low ridges and Wo. 2 shews one of the worst 
corners in this section of the work. Here I was caught by the water 
while widening and strengthening the work and, to prevent accidents, 
had to throw the earth excavated to the hill side of the channel 
instead of using it to strengthen the embankment. 
No. 8 shews a cut through a rocky “neck”. to the depth 
of about five feet with a view beyond of a second silt-collecting dam 
placed in a convenient hollow about three quarters of a mile above: 
the discharge point into the main dam. 
No. 4 shews the gully cut by the water from the canal 
in making the tumble of twenty feet from the one level. to the other ; 
