Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/299

Rh break or even available saddle occurs throughout their course north of this point in our province, is probably without parallel in the known world.

“After three observations on this pass, calculating the average stand of the barometer at the sea-level, and the altitude of Lake Wanaka, 974 feet, as given by McKerrow of Otago, with which my own observations closely correspond, the altitude of the pass is 1612 feet above the level of the sea, or 638 feet above Lake Wanaka. As before stated, there is properly speaking no saddle over which a traveller has to go, being only obliged to cross from one watercourse to another, ascending a hank of about 15 feet of loose shingle thrown across the rent, and arriving on a flat of very small slope, covered with open forest, which in half a mile brings him to another small watercourse flowing north. I may here add that at this point the mountains on both sides reach their highest elevation, being covered with perpetual snow, and glaciers of large extent.”

Both chains unite again in Mount Stuart, on the western side of the remarkable pass referred to, and continue without interruption in the same south-west direction towards Mount Aspiring, the southern boundary point of our Alps; but it is nevertheless true, that the Southern Alps on the western side of this break begin to lose their continuity, being generally broken in sharp pyramidal peaks with deep but generally inaccessible saddles between them. Such a saddle, for instance, we observed at the head of the Young, one of the tributaries of the Makarora, north of Mount Alba, and which, according to Maori tradition, was used formerly to reach Jackson’s Bay.

The dense covering of forest in the valleys, and of sub-Alpine and Alpine vegetation on the mountain-sides, has hitherto impeded the exploration of every valley to its head in the central chain, so as to be certain that no other passes available for mountaineers remain to be discovered; but I must state my conviction that for the general intercourse between the eastern and western sides, so far as is at present necessary, the pass at the head of the Hurunui and Taramakau, in the north of the province, and that at the head of the rivers Makarora and Haast, in the south, will at present be quite sufficient. The engineers of the Provincial Government of Canterbury have nearly finished a bridle-track over the first-named pass to the mouth of the Grey, which will in course of time be changed into a road for carriages and drays. The steep slopes of the Southern Alps are situated on the western side, whilst on the eastern, large lateral chains often little inferior in altitude to the main chain, but mostly running in a north and south direction, branch off from the principal systems.

In a line parallel with the direction of the Alps, we meet with a