Note 1, Page 35.

“or upheaving still
The floor above their level.”

In the earthquake of 1855, we had a good illustration of the upheaving of the land. Previous to that time the river Hutt was somewhat navigable for large boats, coming up for cargoes of sawn timber, with the rising of the tide to some distance—say a quarter of a mile above the bridge which spans the river. Since the time of the earthquake, the tide does not come, by the course of the stream, to within a mile of where it used to flow. Formerly a great deal of land had Yankee water frontage, being then generally overflowed even at low tide, especially near the mouth of the river; but now the same land is high and dry, being raised above the water’s level even at high tide, and is made available as grazing runs for cattle and sheep. By the same causes as above alluded to, large swamps full of N. Z. flax, which luxuriate amid water and mire, stretching across the valley and could not be drained to any advantage, as every tide proved an obstacle to such work; but now all such obstacles are removed, and drainage can easily be effected, such lands are now ready for the improvements of cultivation, and much has already undergone a cheering change from what such formerly was. The above remarks are applicable to other places I have seen. The bay of Pahautanui for instance, the waters of which formerly washed up to the side of the road, but now even at high tide, some hundreds of acres may be said to be reclaimed land without the interference of human skill or labour. Such instances of the land’s upheaving as above, and which have taken place from time to time in former periods are easily discernible in several places of the different valleys opening out towards the sea, by the ridges of beach shingle left as the waters were obliged to retire. In the Wai-nui-o-mata for instance, where a drain was made alongside the formation of a road, I could see among the shingle stones the remains of cockle shells, showing that here the sea waves once have washed. As this place was considerably more elevated than the Hutt at the time when the upheaving of the land caused the waters of the Wai-nui-o-mata inland lake to retire, leaving the drainings of the hills in possession of the deeper hollows to form a swamp in other times, a considerable portion of the Hutt valley must have been covered with the briny waters of the sea; the sea beach then being somewhere about the Taita or the Gorges.∗