158 Historical Notes on the 



morning of March the 5th in Okarito. After engaging two miners to 

 accompany me on my trip south, one of whom was Mr. "W. Docherty, 

 who had. on his own behalf, explored the headwaters of the Clarke and 

 Landsborough some time previously, I obtained the loan of two pack- 

 horses from a storekeeper living at Bruce Bay, who happened just then to 

 be in Okarito for the purpose of procuring provisions. On March 6th 

 we started for Bruce Bay, and having selected an ebb tide, we advanced 

 rapidly on a hard sandy beach, the more so as we found the mouth of 

 both Totaras, small tidal rivers, closed. When the water behind the 

 bars, thrown up by heavy seas, has risen sufficiently high to force a 

 passage, it is often for several days impossible to cross these otherwise 

 unimportant lagoon outlets. The TTaiau, which was crossed near its 

 mouth, although the weather was very fine, was rather high, very thick 

 and difficult to wade through, but Mr. Bobinson, the Bruce Bay 

 storekeeper, informed me that this was its usual height, except in the 

 midst of wiirt er, when I had ascended it some years previously. Wherever 

 the morainic accumulations had retreated from the seashore the whole 

 banks, principally where the coast formed shallow bays, had been 

 worked by the gold-miners, but most of the claims were now abandoned. 

 In the evening we camped two miles south of the "Waikukupa river at 

 the point where the old northern lateral moraine of the Wekeka glacier 

 forms a bold headland, and which can only be crossed at low water. 

 Starting at midnight, and having moonlight in our favour, we crossed 

 the several bold headlands which, between the point and the Weheka 

 river, jut into the sea, having often to seek our way amongst the 

 huge blocks of rock which lie here in the tideway, and to watch for a 

 favourable opportunity, when the waves retreated for a moment, to pass 

 a dangerous corner. Early m the morning we arrived at the mouth of 

 that important river, where we had to wait for low water. Again on 

 our road at eleven o'clock in the morning, in order to reach Bruce Bay 

 in the evening, we crossed the broad Weheka without any mishap, and 

 after travelling almost without intermission along high morainic walls, 

 which most instructively show the form and size of the huge glacier 

 which formerly extended so far, we reached the Karangarua, another 

 lar<je river of glacier origin, which, although broad and deep, was 

 crossed without difficulty. Shortly after having passed this river, the 

 moraines retreat from the coast, and a swampy low tract of country 

 reaches to the very foot of the central chain, the coast-line forming 

 a shallow bay known as Hunt's Bay. A number of gold-diggers 

 had settled along this beach, built houses, planted gardens, and 

 were following their avocation in a peculiar manner. Here during 



