468 
and towards the West coast. The hills are composed of irregular 
and imperfectly stratified beds of shingle , gravel , sand and clay, 
resting upon tertiary strata. These beds are of quaternary age, 
and being part of the generally diffused drift formation , which fills 
up all the principal valleys and covers all the flats amongst the 
mountains, afford evidence of the great action of water and ice 
upon the surface within a comparatively very recent period. The 
large dam composed of colossal rugged blocks of rock, which 
borders the lower end of lake Rotoiti , may be looked upon as the 
moraine of a former glacier. 
It is, no doubt, in consequence of the peculiar configuration 
of the country just described that the shores of Blind Bay are 
favored with the excellent climate, for which they are famous. 
However heavy the gale in Cook’s straits may be , Blind Bay is 
always calm. From the swell of the sea the Bay is protected by 
the land projecting to a great distance near Separation Point and 
d’Urville’s Island; while the mountain -ranges converging towards 
the South form a regular wedge warding off the violent atmospheric 
currents from the South. Ships, therefore, find allways shelter in 
Blind Bay from the dreaded gales that rage in Cook’s Straits; and 
the town of Nelson , situated on the Southeast shore of the Bay 
at the immediate foot of the Eastern ranges , unlike other cities on 
the coast of New Zealand, which are rather too much subject to 
wind, enjoys a soothing calm, which combined with a clear and 
rarely clouded sky renders its climate the pleasantest in New Zea- 
land. Nelson, therefore, has been justly styled “the garden of New- 
Zealand.” 
The town of Nelson was founded but few years after Welling- 
ton , and was the second settlement formed by the New Zealand 
Company in Cook’s Straits. In February 1842, the first vessel 
arrived with a number of immigrants, and the 25“' May of the 
same year is marked in the annals of the city as the ever memor- 
able day, when the first plough penetrated the virgin soil of the 
new colony. Notwithstanding sore and heavy trials, which the 
infant-colony had to undergo — already in 1843, in a fatal encoun- 
