A First Year In Canterbury Settlement By Samuel Butler


















































































































 -   Before one, and behind
one, and on either hand, waves the yellow tussock upon the stony plain,
interminably monotonous.  On - Page 48
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Before One, And Behind One, And On Either Hand, Waves The Yellow Tussock Upon The Stony Plain, Interminably Monotonous.

On the left, as you go southward, lies Banks Peninsula, a system of submarine volcanoes culminating in a flattened dome, little more than 3000 feet high.

Cook called it Banks Island, either because it was an island in his day, or because no one, to look at it, would imagine that it was anything else. Most probably the latter is the true reason; though, as the land is being raised by earthquakes, it is just possible that the peninsula may have been an island in Cook's days, for the foot of the peninsula is very little above the sea-level. It is indeed true that the harbour of Wellington has been raised some feet since the foundation of the settlement, but the opinion here is general that it must have been many centuries since the peninsula was an island.

On the right, at a considerable distance, rises the long range of mountains which the inhabitants of Christ Church suppose to be the backbone of the island, and which they call the Snowy Range. The real axis of the island, however, lies much farther back, and between it and the range now in sight the land has no rest, but is continually steep up and steep down, as if Nature had determined to try how much mountain she could place upon a given space; she had, however, still some regard for utility, for the mountains are rarely precipitous - very steep, often rocky and shingly when they have attained a great elevation, but seldom, if ever, until in immediate proximity to the West Coast range, abrupt like the descent from the top of Snowdon towards Capel Curig or the precipices of Clogwyn du'r arddu. The great range is truly Alpine, and the front range occasionally reaches an altitude of nearly 7000 feet.

The result of this absence of precipice is, that there are no waterfalls in the front ranges and few in the back, and these few very insignificant as regards the volume of the water. In Switzerland one has the falls of the Rhine, of the Aar, the Giesbach, the Staubbach, and cataracts great and small innumerable; here there is nothing of the kind, quite as many large rivers, but few waterfalls, to make up for which the rivers run with an almost incredible fall. Mount Peel is twenty-five miles from the sea, and the river-bed of the Rangitata underneath that mountain is 800 feet above the sea line, the river running in a straight course though winding about in its wasteful river- bed. To all appearance it is running through a level plain. Of the remarkable gorges through which each river finds its way out of the mountains into the plains I must speak when I take my dray through the gorge of the Ashburton, though this is the least remarkable of them all; in the meantime I must return to the dray on its way to Main's, although I see another digression awaiting me as soon as I have got it two miles ahead of its present position.

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