2 Historical Notes on the 



his Honor "W". S. Moorhouse, Esq., Superintendent o£ Canterbury, 

 requesting me to proceed as soon as convenient to that province, as 

 he was anxious that I should make some geological detail examinations 

 of the Mountain range which separates Port Lyttelton from the 

 Canterbury plains. Through this range the tunnel for the Christ- 

 church and Lyttelton railway, a truly gigantic undertaking, considering 

 the growth of the settlement, had been projected, and after having 

 been begun by some English contractors (Messrs. Smith and Knight), 

 the contract after a few months was thrown up by that firm, 

 principally owing to the fact that they had met with some specially 

 hard basaltic rocks on the Lyttelton end of the projected tunnel. 



Geological Survey of Mount Pleasant, Banks Peninsula, 



1860. 



My examinations of Mount Pleasant, the mountain in question, 

 began on December the 1st, of that year, and occupied me for about a 

 fortnight. On December the 19th I presented my Eeport,* together 

 with 34 geological specimens, in illustration, to his Honor the 

 Superintendent, with which that gentleman proceeded to Melbourne 

 to obtain if possible a new contractor for that important work. 

 Mr Moorhouse made a preliminary arrangement with Messrs. 

 Holmes and Co. of that city, and after these gentlemen had satisfied 

 themselves from a personal inspection of the ground thai the deposits 

 to be pierced by the tunnel were not of such difficult nature as the 

 former contractors had imagined, and that the main results of my 

 survey might be relied upon, the new contract for the continuation 

 of the work was finally settled. This important undertaking to 

 which Canterbury owes a great deal of its remarkable progress was 

 brought to a successful termination on May 25, 1866, when both adits 

 met near the centre, the tunnel being open for railway traffic on 

 December 9, lS67.f A careful geological examination of the range 

 between Lyttelton and the Canterbury plains, which has an average 

 altitude of 1300 feet, and a more general survey of the mountains 

 forming Lyttelton Harbour showed that Banks Peninsula consists of 



* Report ef a Geological Survey of Mount Pleasant, presented to his Honor the Superintendent, 

 and laid before the Provincial Council, Dec. 20, 1860. 



f The tunnel was laid out and its execution solely superintended by Mr Edward Dobson, C.E., 

 Provincial Engineer. 



