Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/264

58 from the terraces that surround their present boundaries; it is plain that the Wakatipu Lake must have extended formerly over the low fertile tract of country that extends east from Frankton to the Crown Ridge. The summits of Peninsula Hill, Morven Hill, and perhaps some of the lesser elevations, would then he islets. The old channel of a large river, leading away from the south end of the lake, at Kingstown, is very suggestive that then the overflow of the lake passed away by it, and down the Mataura to the sea. An examination of the valley in which this old channel lies, does not readily explain the cause of this rearrangement in nature, for no sudden upheaval has there dammed the waters of the lake back from their ancient exit; the old channel remains as distinct and as well defined as though the change had only been a thing of a few years. The waters of the lake have receded rather more than a mile in distance, and left the old channel high and dry. The very abrupt gorge through which the Kawarau (the present outlet of the lake) flows, suggests that the change has been brought about by the sudden erupting force of an earthquake opening a pass through the mountains lower than the level of the then lake; and that the present deep gutter-like channel of the Kawarau has been the subsequent slow and gradual wearing down of the channel by the rapid current that sweeps along it.

The depth of the lakes is an interesting consideration in connexion with them. I had not the means of determining it; but that their depth may be reckoned by hundreds of feet, I have almost no doubt. On leaving the shore, at the distance of a boat length or two, the bottom may be seen through the clear water at a depth of 20 or 30 feet; but there is then very often a sudden dip, and there begins the deep blue water through which the eye can no more penetrate. Up the Fiords of the Te Anau and Manipori Lakes there are many places where there is no beach at all; the rocks rise perpendicularly out of the water for hundreds of feet, so that it may be said there is a precipice above and a precipice below the surface of the water. If the waters of the lakes were suddenly to dry up, the present shore-line would, I believe, appear in most places as a mere ledge on the face of a precipice. On the Wakatipu Lake, one of Mr. Rees’ boatmen tried the depth of the lake near Queenstown: by means of a weight attached to the end of a rope, 200 fathoms of line were let out before reaching what was considered to be the bottom; similarly, on the Wanaka Lake, 70 fathoms were let out. These results, although they cannot be relied on as precise, are of value as showing how very deep the lakes must be. Soundings of the lakes, carefully taken with deep-sea sounding apparatus, would aid in the solution of the problem—“By what means were the lakes produced?”

The recent development of inland navigation has directed at-