The Canterbury Plain.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 12, 1 September 1900, Page 928

The Canterbury Plain.

By J. Wylde

SY visitors go away rom Canterbury, and nany residents remain Ind c r the impression hat the chief agricultural >rovince of New Zealand s flat, uninteresting, and )are of physical charms.

Very few people are fully aware of the grand scenery to be found in Canterbury, and fewer still will believe that the province has regions quite as picturesque and romantic as any in New Zealand. There is certainly the great Canterbury Plain, which gives 112 miles of level seaboard broken only by Bank's Peninsula, and makes some hundreds of square miles of rich pastoral and agricultural country as level as an inclined billiard table, but even this plain has its beauties. People admire the boundless stretch of ocean, although as a rule they rarely see more than a score miles of it. They can see a far greater extent of plain, and then it has more variety, more freedom ; it is not such a slave to the elements. One can roam about the plain when the stoutest vessel would be helpless at sea. Canterbury has sufficient natural attractions without having to find beauty perforce in its great plain ; but the plain has beauties — its very breadth is a beauty — and even away from the rich pastures and fields on that great tussock-covered upland near the mountains it is rich in colouring. An evening sun paves it with crimson gold, cloud shadows give it changeful shades.

• The very formation of the plain is a triumph of nature ; all the mightiest powers assisted to build it. Volcanic forces raised a mountain range, huge, grand, majestic, wind, rain, frost, and snow, heat and cold,

did battle with it, cracked rocks, tumbled down crags, scarred the slopes with gulliesand ravines, dug out hugo gorges, and wore down high peaks. These powers have worn down the mountain range to a mere skeleton of its former self, but they have only increased the size of the plain. The rocks that they broke, pounded and polished and swept down from the mountains with the triumphant floods, built its foundation, the sand and earth ground fine with infinite labour was carried further, and has gone to form the rich cornlKnds near the sea, which the vainest man may be proud to possess and ornament with houses and trees and all the things in which he takes delight. The mountains are perishing, but the plain is growing. Man has seized the plain with that avidity with which he seizes all good things, he has built cities on it, made gardens there, and would sooner have a tiny portion of it than a mountain larger than a country and reaching beyond the limits of perpetual snow. The plain yields him golden grain and rich harvests ; the mountains send him floods and fierce storms, yet even the storms are grander on the plain. The plain on the seaboard is only a few feet above the Pacific, but it rises gradually as it approaches the mountains until it reaches an elevation of over a thousand feet, and becomes a wild upland of yellow tussock, and this upland plain is the battleground and playground of the winds. Mountain storms may shriek and rave in t':e gorges, but the gorges cramp their efforts and distort them, the plain gives them ample freedom, so they revel there. The winds of the high plain are characteristic ; their signs are unmistakable, and the youngest schoolboy on the uplands is familiar with the winds he

familiarly calls the " Nor'-wester " and the " Sou-w ester," and can tell by the sky when either is coming. After days of calm weather in summer time when the great mountains — the western fringe of the Southern Alps — are robbed of their white snow robes, and the only sign of ice is a gleam of silver in the high gullies, when even the foothills are deeply purple, then a misty haze like the quiver of heat steals over the highest peaks, and a distant murmur that grows in volume comes with a faint warm puff of air. Dark smoke-like clouds issue from the mountain gorges, and the murmur grows into a roar. A stranger, proud of his observation, might say laconically, " Bush fii-es and a thunderstorm. How plainly one can see the effects, though those mountains, must be half-a-dozen miles away." The listener (if he knows the country) may laugh and reply, " Why, those mountains are thirty miles away from as. The thunder you hear is the wind in the gorge, that cloud is sand and dust, not smoke. It is only a Nor-'wester coming, just when I don't want it. It will blow big guns by two o'clock." Great white clouds in solid masses hang like an arch of marble over the mountain range, and the sky beneath the roof of the arch and the crest of the mountains is brightly, intensely blue. The dust clouds pour from the gorges, the murmur develops into a thunderstorm roar. The Nor'-wester is already at work amongst the hills, tearing up sand and stones from the river beds, scooping holes even in their terrace banks, hustling the lonely shepherd as he clings to tufts and shrubs and drags himself slowly homeward. Then it bursts over the plains, powerful, invisible, grandly free. The long tussocks bend in wave after wave. The trees planted by the settler to shield his home from this very wind, creak and bend before its fury. Though coming from the high mountains, from glaciers and fields of perpetual snow, the Nor'-wester is generally hot and dry. Even in winter time, when the mountains are clothed in snow from base to summit, this wind, though coming direct from them, is warm. This is

the cause of the sudden floods in our great rivers. After weeks of rain they might not be swollen a single inch, for the rain on tho plain turns to snow on tho mountains, and there it may lie until a Nor'-wostor comoa. But then there is commotion on tho highlands. The snow melts with wonderful rapidity, the rivers rise in a single night, and send rocks and stones rumbling down their beds that go to swell the plain. So it has come to be a saying of Canterbury rivers, " In wet weather they are dry, and in dry weather they are in flood." Occasionally, though the blasts of a Nor'-wester follow one another with great rapidity, they vary several degrees in temperature. A blast may feel warm for a second or two, then it comes almost cold, then warm again, aud alternately warm and cold for hours, the change of temperature being sudden and sharp as a gun flash. When the Nor-'wester has decided to blow for a week or two it gets into tho habit of taking a rest in the evening, dropping to a calm about sunset in order to blow with redoubled foroo again about midnight. When once settled into this habit it may keep on for a month, and then people oxhaust what little enorgy it leaves them in abusing it. It is curious that a wind coming from regions of ice and snow on the mountains, or even from the altitude that the mountains reach, should bo warm, and several theories have been originated to account for tho phenomena. It is commonly supposed that the wind comes dn'ect from tho burning plains of Australia and from tropical latitudes, leaves the moisture gathered during its ocean voyage on the western slopes of the Southern Alps, and retaining its heat, rushes down the eastern side of the ranges actually warmer than it was in Westland. The Nor'-wester may come from Australia, hot winds are at a discount there, but if it came from the infernal regions it must be reduced in temperature if it rises over those great mountain ranges where a thermometer would be rarely above freezing point and frequently below it. The Southern Alps, the mountain backbone of New Zealand, run

in a north-east and south-west direction, so that a Nor'-wester blows directly from them, and a Sou-w ester blows along their base, and nowhere is a Sou-w ester seen to such perfection as on the plain that fringes the mountain range. As a general rule the winds change with the course of the sun — from north-east to north-west from northwest to south-west and round again. When the Nor'-wester has melted most of the snow on the eastern ranges, flooded the big rivers, and dried up theoaths and energyof mankind, the sky shows signs of a change, the most ordinary observer will notice it and prophecy rain and storm, great black ciouds gather in the south, the Nor'-wester becomes less persistent, and only blows in fitful gustsIts rival is coming from the wintry seas, fierce, fresh, and eager for the fray. Without a moment's warniug both winds meet on the plain and battle for mastery. They shriek and howl in their fury, twirl l'ound and round in mad embrace, catch up leaves, straws and dust, and twist them into whirlwind columns. Up and down, hither and thither, now the mountain wind, the warm Nor'wester advances, now the champion of wintry seas beats it back again. They gi'apple with one another in mid air, circle and eddy with vaiying chance, and have a glorious battle whilst it lasts. Sometimes the Nor'-wester has the victory, and bellows in triumph, but oftener it succumbs to its hardier rival. The black clouds 101 lon in massive battalions. The cold clear wind, fresh from Autartic seas, gathers in strength, and the Nor'-wester fades into nothingness before it. When once the victory is assured the black-cloud battalions hasten towards the mountains as if they were the object of contention. They roll in mad delight over the level uplands and dash at the rugged hills ; scale slope after slope, cover peak and crag and hide them from view. An hour before the mountains, bared of snow by the warm Nor'-wester, were standing out against the sky clear and cloudless, now they are hidden, and when the three days' persistent rain brought by the south-west wind has ceased the dwellers on the plain can see a new and

beautiful change. The clouds melt from the sky as if by magic ; all nature seems refreshed. Then the mists roll up from the hills like a great stage curtain, and the mountains are revealed rising coldly grand to the blue sky, robed from base to summit in pure white snow. How glorious they are at sunset, what lovely hues they take, how white and ghostly they are beneath the light of the stars, what beautiful ornaments they are to the dwellers on the plain ! Then again, the sky turns darkly blue, the Nor'-wester gathers in strength, its warmth melts the mountain snows, swells every creek and torrent into flood, and the shallow streamlets of the rivers into seas of muddy waters that roar as loudly as thunder, and carry millions of tons of earth to add to the plain. Although the Nor'-wester and the Sou'wester are the strongest winds of the plain, and have complete dominion over it, yet they allow calm bright weather to reign for week after week in autumn and wintertime. The nights are clear and cold, the sky sparkles with myriads of stars, the air is as pure as the watei's of a mountain lake. Jb]ven when the nights are so cold that frost makes the ground hai'd, no sooner has the sun risen than the air becomes mild and balmy as a Mediterranean breeze. It is in such weather as this that one sees a wonderful mirage on the plain. The people on the uplands know it well, and those living at the base of the Malvern Hills see it to greater perfection than anybody else. They are nearly a thousand feet higher than Christchurch, and the plain descends from them to the Cathedral City in a gradual slope and ends abruptly in the sea or against the Port Hills. After a clear, calm, frosty night the people dwelling between the Hororata and the Sehvyn may see towards Chi*istchurch a strange phenomenon. The plain instead of sloping towards the sea rises towards the sky. The great south bank of the Rakaia River shows up like a huge wall. Clumps of trees and homesteads hidden on the cleai'est of summer days are plainly seen now. Where Christchurch. stands, a great lake appears.

Some people imagine it to be Lake Ellesmere, but it is only the mirage, and it melts away before an hour has passed. This mirage has deceived many strangers to the high plain. The hot deserts of Australia can show no such picturesque effects. Sometimes another hill range appears up in the sky with all its peaks pointing downwards and its base wreathed in an aerial plain. Then the floating hill range descends slowly towards the real hills, and at one moment it is balanced on the highest peak, and the effect is truly wonderful — the silvery sea beneath the Port Hills clearly defined, and on their highest

peak, another hill range, thoir counterpart, only reversed and high iv tho air, the baao of the hills having a slice of plain attached. This mirage sometimes lasts half-au-hoar after sunrise, and is ono of the most wonderful sights in New Zealand. If it occurred iv tho centre of the North Island or Otago people would ask tho Govornmont to build roads that they might go and sco it ; but as it occurs only a few miles from Christchurch and on the Canterbury Plain, it is almost unknown. The Plain can show many other interesting things, and yofc it is the least written-about portion of Canterbury.