13

C— 4b.

mendations to prospectors who might be making inquiries as to the most promising districts from a mineralogical point of view, I deemed the time so occupied by no means lost either to myself or the community. "We left Dunedin on the 29th March, and proceeded via Lawrence, Teviot, Dunstan, Cromwell, and Clutha Valley to Pembroke, at the foot of Lake Wanaka, which we reached on the 31st. On the following day we took the steamer up the lake, and on the same evening reached Mr. Stewart's station in the Makarora Valley, eight miles from the head of the lake. Procuring horses from Mr. Stewart, and accompanied by himself as a most efficient, very pleasant, and well-informed travelling companion and guide, we resumed our journey next day, and reached Stewart's hut, where we camped very comfortably for the night. The hut is situated on the left bank of the united Clarke and Landsborough Eivers — here called the Haast —-and about a mile above the junction of the Burke with the Haast, in a well-sheltered corner, just outside a piece of bush, in the middle of a fairly-grassed plain of very considerable area. About midway between Stewart's station on the Makarora and his hut on the Haast we crossed the saddle known as the Haast Pass, whose altitude, you, by consulting your aneroid, calculated as 1,730 feet above sea-level, if I have it noted correctly, but which is returned as 1,716 feet by the Survey Department. This is the highest point on the track between Lake Wanaka and the mouth of the Haast. The grade up the Makarora Valley to within a very short distance of the summit of the pass is a wonderfully easy one. It is for all purposes nearly as good as level, and one is astonished after travelling to the saddle to find that an ascent of something like 800 feet has been made since leaving the head of the lake. There is a very considerable area of level and undulating and gently-sloping country, mostly covered with bush, in the long Makarora and Upper Haast Valley, which will be very available for settlement when railway-communication will be opened with Pembroke. I did not in all the Makarora or Upper Haast, or in any of their tributaries, see among the river-gravels any indication of minerals of any value. I might, however, being on horseback, and without much leisure to examine the river-beds minutely, easily miss scheelite, on account of its general resemblance to quartz. There was a good deal of vein-quartz seen in the upper parts of the Makarora as well as in the Upper Haast, but it was generally of a very clean well-crystallized variety, and was not, so far as I could judge, of a promising appearance to the prospector for gold. There was also, except in occasional patches, an absence of the bluishblack oxide of manganese colours on the rocks in situ exposed to view ; and this also I take as an unfavourable indication. We resumed our journey next morning, 2nd April, crossing the Upper Haast (in the map called " the Burke ") about a mile from the hut, and following the Haast (now the Burke, Haast, Clarke, and Landsborough all united) on the left bank down to the Haast Settlement at the mouth of that river, which we reached the same evening. All down the river-bed the boulders and shingle were mica schists, chlorite schists, a hard greenish-grey maitai-lookiug slate, fragments of a coarse impure jade or Maori greenstone, pieces of red-brown jasperoids, a considerable proportion of grey and greenish felspathic and hornblendio dyke-stones, with occasional fragments of pure white and yellowish-white crystallized limestone and a fair proportion of vein-quartz. Much of the hard slate was traversed by narrow veins of pure white quartz. We did not see in the river-bed any granite all that day; but as it w ras getting dark, and we were hurrying to get to the settlement over the last ten miles, we might easily overlook fragments of granite among the river debris. In crossing the river at its mouth, moreover, on leaving the Haast Settlement a few days afterwards, we saw in the river-bed a fair sprinkling of granite, and Mr. Stewart, through whose cattle-run we had been riding for the last two days, and who was evidently well informed in the rough geological as well as pastoral features of the country, pointed out to us at various places high spurs, from four to ten miles away, on the right bank of the river, which he said were granite. The presence of so much dyke-stone, chlorite-slate, vein-quartz, and slates intersected by quartz-veins impressed me as a favourable indication of gold-bearing country. At the same time I have not, on inquiry, heard of gold having ever been found there, and I am aware that the same kind of stones are the chief contents of the river-beds in some parts of Canterbury on the east of the great water-shed, where gold in payable quantities has not been found. The mountain-ranges through which the Haast Valley has been cut are everywhere densely covered with bush to the altitude of about 2,500 ft., above which they show but scanty vegetation with, at the time of our visit, occasional patches of last year's snow still lying on the southern flanks of the highest spurs. There are in some parts of the valley large areas of flat bush-covered country at an altitude of from 200 ft. to 600 ft. above sea-level. The character of the bush, the large size of the ferns, and the vigorous condition and luxuriant growth of the underscrub and other vegetation, as well as the appearance of the soil itself where exposed, all point to a high degree of fertility. These favourable indications were more abundant as we neared the Haast Settlement at the mouth of the river, where the land, as shown by the fine paddocks of English grass and the high-fed condition of the bullocks, is of very good quality indeed. At Marks's accommodation-house, which is a large house and well found in every way, we enjoyed all the comforts of a good hotel, where we passed Sunday, the 4th April. On Monday, the weather deceiving us, w7e procured fresh horses from Mr. Marks, and started about 11 o'clock, under the guidance of Warden McParlane, for Jackson's Bay, which we reached about 10 o'clock the same evening. The track from Haast to the Bay lies along the beach, and is interrupted by four unfordable rivers, provided with ferries subsidized by the Government or the county. The first two rivers about nine miles from the Haast are the Okuru and the Turnbull, which enter the sea together, and which we crossed at Collier's Ferry, we rowing across, and swimming our horses alongside the boat. Nine miles farther we crossed the Waiatoto, in the same way, at Hyndley's Perry. Other five miles along a beautiful hard beach, skirted by a lovely bush, brought us to the Arawata, then rapidly rising to a state of high flood by the heavy rain which