4.—Waikoau to N.W. Angle.

Not having yet visited the mountain country west of Waiau, I have only to record a few detached facts concerning it obtained from the Natives. As the "Acheron" is said to have surveyed its harbours, we shall, it is hoped, soon be in possession of authentic information concerning them. In one of them (Charles Harbour) a hot spring has lately been discovered.

Another, Blythe Bay, is the sea-side haunt of the once powerful Hawea tribes; one of their mats, of kakapo (Strigops) skins was found there not long since. As these bush Natives are dreaded by the coast tribes, who either run away from or kill them whenever, as rarely happen, they meet, I have been unable to glean any intelligence as to their present number, but it is doubtless much reduced from its strength at the time of their attack on Ouetota, then a strong and populous pa, or they would have long since avenged the injuries inflicted on them by the last generation.

Beyond Hakapureirei Point (as noted on the diagram accompanying my journal) is the mouth of the Wairaurahiri, the outlet of Hauroka, a large lake winding among the mountain masses of Maukaropa. This lake is only two days' journey from Waiau, the path following the beach to Waikoau, and then running between Haukore and the north end of Okaka range to the lake.

Haukore, shown in the diagram above referred to, is the Maori barometer, a cap of mist on, it being a sure sign of an approaching storm from the west or south-west.

I regret that I am unable at present to accompany these papers with an explanatory map, without which assistance I fear I shall be unable to render intelligible the following sketch of the geology of the country. Until the return of the Government Surveyor I cannot attempt the compilation of one, as the bearings which I took only served to show me the untrustworthiness of the present maps of the country, without furnishing sufficient material for a more correct one.

The geological features of the country which came under my observation are very simple. A large development of carboniferous strata extends from Molyneux to Mataura, dipping to the southward at an angle commencing at 45° and gradually lessening as it approaches the latter river, when the lignite appears and the strata undulate.

The table-land beginning at Oteraumaka consists of the same rocks, and the gravels and clays of the Aparima table-land, which contains a turbary deposit, may possibly prove to be an upper member of the same series. The formation reappears in Waewae Bay at Aropaki, whence it reaches to Waiau, and apparently to the end of the table-land at the western end of the bay. Lignite of a superior quality is known to exist at Preservation Harbour, at the south-west angle of the Island. (See Dr. Forbes, R.N., Report on New Zealand Lignite, in Government Gazette, 21st February, 1851.)

These beds, ancient and modern, would appear then to extend with little interruption from Saddle Hill, in Otage, across the Island.

The series from Molyneux to Mataura comprises grits, sandstones, the strata mentioned in journal as indurated shale, and, at the Mataura and the Pomahaka seams, and beds of lignite. I regret that the specimens of fossils from the shale which I collected on my return are lost. Those collected on the journey down will not arrive till the end of May; I. cannot, therefore, describe them with accuracy. There were specimens of at least four species decidedly extinct. In some examples mere casts remained, in others the shell was replaced by pyrites. The rock was dark-brown and homogeneous, divided by cleavage into rhomboidal masses which broke easily with an earthy conchoidal fracture, leaving a page 280compact rounded nodule. In the sandstone were fragments of fossil wood and imperfect remains of smaller plants. In the Mataura lignite, wood was easily discoverable. The same specimen would sometimes show it at one end almost recent in appearance, in the middle carbonized, and at the other end silicified. Leaves resembling those of the broad-leaf (kapuka), beautifully preserved, occurred in the thin seams of lignite at Haunui Fall, and in the pale blue micaceous clay, which overlies the main seam on the west bank. In this the upper shale were remains of ostrea, modiolus, turritella, and many other genera, complete, but in a very friable state; some species, a large turritella seven inches long, forms I have not met with among the recent shells of New Zealand.

At Iwikatea, and again at Tuturau, I remarked erratic blocks of granular quartz rock lying on the surface. I did not observe any fossils in the more recent beds, as the Yellow Bluff, Aparima. The turbary deposit there contains flax and wood, little altered. I found on the river bank, a few bones of the dinornis, which had apparently come from that deposit, but I did not detect any in situ.

The-lignite of Waewae Bay is evidently more ancient than that at Aparima, but not coeval with the Mataura bed. It rests on a soft, pale-yellow sandstone, without fossils, and is overlaid by the drift. To the south-west it runs out and disappears; a slight northerly dip also brings it below the beach before reaching Waiau, but I believe it reappears near Waikoau associated with shale or clay, described by the Natives as full of shells.

Igneous rocks not extensively developed east of Waiau. They are represented by the greenstone of the Bluff and Omaui, showing again at "the rock" at Oraka (see journal), at Matara Crags, in the Kawakaputaputa Reserve, again in the islet opposite Arakaka, at Aropaki. These beds dip to the N.E. at about 40° presenting them as the points of Kawakaputaputa and Oraka, and probably of other prominent headlands in the same line; lower, beds of leptynite and yellow granite, with black mica, crop out. An amygdaloid occurs in situ at Poroporokene, and pebbles of it and various porphyries are brought down by the Waiau.

We found a few masses of scoriaceous lava in the bed of the Mataura, and of a brick-red schistoze rock, apparently shale, altered by contact with igneous rocks.

As I shall have hereafter to return to the subject, I defer for the present any remark on the limestone of Otautau and the tertiary fossiliferous sandstone of Pukekonui, described and collected by Mr. Nairn, closing here this slight sketch, until I shall be enabled to transmit a map in illustration of the observations I have recorded.