260 
Captain Wing having been detained by his pilot-duties at 
the departure of the mail-steamer, it was not until January 
18, that we could begin our excursion. The weather was ex- 
tremely favourable; there was a perfect calm. The fogs, which in 
the morning had covered, like a pall, that low flat region, had 
passed away by 7 o’clock, and the sun looked cheerfully from the 
cloudless sky upon the placid watery mirror of the Manukau Gulf. 
A better day we could not have desired. 
We embarked from the Onehunga pier; five natives managed 
the oars, and with Captain Wing at the helm, we drove along the 
Northcoast of the harbour. The banks break off in steep declivities, 
presenting regular strata of sandstone and shale, and with here 
and there small seams of lignite at the water’s edge , exactly as on 
the banks of the Waitemata. The strata lie mostly horizontal, 
local disturbances, such as at Matinga Rahi Point (Cape Horn), 
excepted. Opposite, on the southern shore, rises the volcanic cone 
Mangere, the volcanic island Puketutu (Weekes Island), and the 
smaller cones about Tumatoa Point. 
In Wliau Bay we had reached that point , where Wliau Creek, 
a long narrow South-branch of the Waitemata cuts so deeply into 
the Auckland Isthmus, that the whole breadth between the two 
harbours amounts to but little over one mile. As the land is more- 
over very low — its highest point being only 111 feet above the 
level of the sea — the colonists have repeatedly entertained the 
project of connecting the two harbours by a canal; and, towards 
the execution of this plan, a benefit rather than disadvantage might 
arise from the fact , that ebb and flow do not take place at the 
same time at the Past and West coasts; the flow being later on 
the West coast by three hours than on the East coast. From Y\ liau 
Bay the coast, intersected by Little Muddy Creek, Waikumate and 
Big Muddy Creek , extends in a southwesterly direction to the long 
and keenly jutting peninsula Puponga. The land here begins to 
rise, and the mountain-ridges of the Titirangi Chain extend their 
wood-clad spurs as far as the coast. 
On the North-side of the Puponga peninsula, in a small inlet, 
