Canterbury and Westland. 395 



covered entirely by detrital matter near its termination (like the 

 present Tasman glacier on the eastern side of the Southern Alps). 

 The two lateral and the central moraines are however best 

 developed, all three exhibiting anticlinal arrangements, and the 

 largest blocks of rocks, often closely packed, are found in them. 

 The two intervening spaces are made up either of fine detrital 

 matter, or of glacier silt, with angular blocks of small size scattered 

 through them. An ancient river bed, similar to the one already 

 described, reposes upon the morainic accumulations between the 

 central and the northern lateral moraines. At the foot of the 

 southern lateral moraine the river Wanganui enters the sea, and on its 

 southern side, somewhat in front of the rest, the Wanganui Sugarloaf, 

 caned Mount One-One by the Natives, rises conspicuously from the^ 

 sea. It is doubtless, like Bold Head, a true frontal moraine, being 

 joined by a low ridge with another higher one, which forms the 

 Puerua Bluff. This latter has at its southern extremity also the rough 

 anticlinal stratification peculiar to lateral moraines. It would be 

 impossible to give in a small section the details of the arrangement 

 these glacier beds exhibit. There are numberless changes, from an 

 assemblage of enormous angular blocks, to the finest glacier silt, 

 deposited in such thin layers that one hundred or more form one inch, 

 and often changing gradually from one into the other, or alternating 

 with each other. The moraines of the united Waitaki-Whataroa 

 glacier (the latter in the map erroneously named the Makaroa) rising in 

 Abut Head to an altitude of about 400 feet, have an arrangement similar 

 to that of the former, and consist also exclusively of rocks derived 

 from the Waihao and Mount Torlesse formations. In some localities 

 the whole wall consists of enormous fragments of rocks only, showing 

 that the destruction in the higher portion of the Alps went on at such 

 a gigantic scale, that we can scarcely form a conception of it. Two 

 miles south of Abut Head, forming the southern bank of the 

 Whataroa, a series of smaller morainic deposits make their appear- 

 ance. They form the southern boundary of this glacier system. 

 South of Lake Okarito the extensive glacier deposits of the Waiau 

 glacier begin. They have a breadth of about ten miles, and exhibit 

 the usual arrangement of the detrital matter. However, no 

 alluvial beds are deposited above or between them. The Weheka- 

 Karangarua moraine is also of considerable proportions, but unlike all 

 the former, metamorphic and igneous rocks occur occasionally amongst 

 the enclosed fragments at its northern end. Advancing towards the 

 south the metamorphic rocks become gradually more numerous, till 



