Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/273

Rh there being no beach along the lake at several places. The only way of driving stock off or on is by crossing the mountains near Moke Lake, at an elevation of 6000 feet; the track can only be taken by sheep, and that of course only when the snow has disappeared.

After passing the precipitous coast-line west of Fortune Cove there begins a stretch of low country extending along the margin of the lake for several miles. It consists of terrace-flats and of hills sufficiently low to be grassed over their summits. It reaches back to the Moke Lake, and then along the Moke Valley behind Ben Lomond to a junction with the Shotover Valley. Its extent, together with the Shotover and Arrow Valleys, and the low country extending east from Queenstown to the Crown Ridge, is 149 square miles. The valleys of the Shotover and Arrow have little or no flats. The mountain spurs running down to them descend from elevations of from 5000 to 8000 feet in so very steep and rugged a manner that, considering the broken nature of the country and the barrenness of its higher parts, not more than one-half of the extent has been classed in Table A as pastoral country. The low country extending east from Queenstown to the Crown Ridge is much the best, not only of the quantity now immediately under consideration, but also of the whole Lake District. It is an undulating extent of 20,000 acres, containing several large flats and one or two considerable hills. The whole is covered with a thick growth of grass, and is certainly entitled to rank with the very best pastoral country in the province. This country would, from affording a safe retreat to the flocks in the winter-season, have been of essential service in developing the pastoral resources of the higher parts of the Shotover and Arrow Valleys; but, as things now are, it has become a commonage for the large number of horses employed in packing, &c., on the Gold-fields.

Of the country lying around the Wakatipu Lake, that only remains to be mentioned which extends down the east side of the lake from Queenstown to Kingstown, and from thence down a valley of 6 miles in length to the Mataura River; the extent is 134 square miles. The low part of this country consists of the valley just mentioned and several thousand acres around Peninsula Hill. The high part consists of the slopes of the Hector Mountains and the ridges of the Eyre Mountains, drained by the Robert and Allen Creeks. The high and low parts of this division of the country bear a fair proportion to one another, and are so situated that the one develops the other.

The Wakaia Valley contains 305 square miles of pastoral country. The surface consists of a terrace-plain of alluvial flats, and of low, long ridges that flank the sides of the Garvie and