Geological Survey of Canterbury , 69 



arriving. As I observed the different groups, I could not help noticing 

 in spite of the commotion and the noise, how very earnest the people 

 were. There was very little drinking, and still less singing ; each one 

 was too much occupied with putting up tents, cooking, and especially 

 with his preparations for the journey, and was thinking no doubt at 

 the same time of the difficulties before him. At the Waitohi gorge 

 I met several parties of diggers, who were on their way back to 

 Christchurch, not being able to endure the hardships of the journey; 

 they had found themselves compelled to make their way back overland, 

 as soon as their means were exhausted. Most of them were dreadfully 

 ragged, and looked quite famished and fallen away, and they could not 

 say enough about the horrible condition of the road and the dangers 

 they had gone through. The gold-diggers by profession did not 

 however consider it worth while to listen to them, as they saw directly 

 that they did not belong to the right class of men to undertake such 

 journeys successfully. Although I was told that 40 miles farther on, 

 immediately below the pass, provisions and oats might be bought, I 

 wished to be quite safe, and sent two more horses on with provisions 

 from here, that I might not be hindered in my progress. 



Where the Waitohi enters the plain, the good made road ends, and 

 only a bridlepath leads on towards Lake Sumner, into which the 

 Hurunui falls, 16 miles from its source ; and then, increased in volume, 

 flows towards the East Coast, forming the boundary between the 

 provinces of Nelson and Canterbury. This bridlepath, about 18 miles 

 long, was originally formed by the sheep farmers who used the hilly 

 ground in the Hurunui lake district as pasture land. The path 

 continues for three miles along the northern terrace of the Waitohi 

 river, a continuation of the Hurunui plain. This terrace consists of 

 alluvium resting upon rocky cliffs, into which the present river has cut 

 its way 100 feet deep, so that it is shut in on both sides by high perpen- 

 dicular walls of rock. Here we leave the tertiary, and enter into a 

 much older formation, palaeozoic sandstones alternating with reddish 

 brown clay slates. Here and there quartzose and diabasic slates 

 occur, dikes of hyperite are also not rare, but their position does not 

 offer any clue to their age. Altogether the geological conditions of 

 this zone show a great similarity with the Mount Torlesse chain, of 

 which this is without doubt the northern continuation. I searched 

 here in vain for fossils, of which generally in our older rocks 

 for more than a hundred square miles scarcely a trace has yet 

 been discovered. Numerous parties crowded past us, scarcely allowing 



