Comparison between the New Zealand and Swiss Alps.

No one, I think, who after visiting the Alps of Switzerland should explore the Alps of New Zealand, could fail to notice two remarkable points of difference between these mountain regions The one is that mountains with sharp serrated summits, which [unclear: are] the exception in Switzerland, are the rule in New Zealand, and the other is that the numerous large waterfalls, which the traveller in Switzerland sees at almost every turn, are quite exceptional in New Zealand. A few waterfalls, but they are very few in comparison with Switzerland, are found in the deep fiords on the west coast, and a few smaller ones towards the heads of the valleys in the heart of the mountains, and these are nearly all. And yet the mountains in New Zealand are quite as rough and rugged as the Alps of Europe, and, indeed, the gorges are more numerous and deeper. There are also other minor points of difference. The passes in New Zealand are lower, and the mountains are in places much more covered with loose debris than any part of the Swiss Alps. But this last is a local peculiarity, and is not so noticeable in Otago as in Canterbury and Nelson.

Two theories may be put forward to explain these differences. One is that the New Zealand Alps are composed of rocks which page 10suffer from decay and degradation much more than the rocks that compose the Alps of Switzerland. The other is that the mountains of New Zealand are of far greater antiquity than the Swiss Alps, and have in consequence suffered a far greater amount of denudation. To any traveller in New Zealand who had limited his explorations to the Province of Otago, east of the great lakes, the first is the theory that would most naturally present itself to his mind, for all the mountains that he would have examined would have been composed of mica schist. But in the west of this Province the mountains are composed of hard gneiss, crossed by dykes of eruptive rocks; and further north, in the provinces of Canterbury, Nelson and Marlborough, the mountains are chiefly formed of sandstones and slates, as hard on the average as the rocks composing the Alps of Switzerland, and yet the phenomena that I have mentioned are quite as noticeable in those provinces as they are in Otago. On the other hand we have proofs in the geologlcal structure of our mountains, as I shall presently show, that the New Zealand Alps have been constantly exposed to the action of rain and wind ever since the jurassic period, and that many of the larger valleys had been cut down nearly to their present depth in the eocene period, a time when the European Alps and the Himalayas were only just rising above the sea. Probably, therefore, the second theory is the more correct, but the first may reasonably be called in to explain local details.