(1833–98).

Politician and banker.

A new biography of Larnach, William James Mudie appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

William James Mudie Larnach was born on 27 January 1833 at Castle Forbes, Patrick Plains, Hunter River, New South Wales, the son of James Larnach, of Rosemount, in the Hunter River district, and of Mary, née Mudie. His father, who had arrived in the colony as a cadet and later became a wealthy station owner, was a brother of Donald Larnach, who was for many years London manager of the Bank of New South Wales. Larnach was educated at the Rev. Irvine Hetherington's High School, Singleton, and at Sydney College. Early in 1851 he joined the Bank of New South Wales in Victoria and served in various capacities until 1862 when he became manager of the Geelong branch of the bank. At the beginning of 1867 he visited Europe and, shortly after his return, was offered the chief managership of the Bank of Otago. He arrived in Dunedin in September 1867 and remained with the bank until 1875, a year after its merger with the National, when he joined Walter Guthrie in the hardware, timber-working, and mercantile firm of Guthrie and Larnach. The firm languished during the depression of the 1880s, and in 1887 Larnach went to Melbourne where he intended to start a business with Montague Pym, the auctioneer. Finding that conditions in Melbourne were not as suitable as he had hoped, Larnach returned to New Zealand a few months later and became a director of the Colonial Bank. He held this position until the bank merged with the Bank of New Zealand.

On 20 December 1875 Larnach was elected to represent Dunedin City in Parliament. In 1877 he moved the motion which unseated the Atkinson Ministry and, as a result, Normanby asked him to form a government. Because he was a comparatively new member of the House, Larnach realised he would have little chance of winning support for a ministry with himself as Premier and he accordingly invited Grey to lead the new ministry. The Grey Government took office on 15 October 1877, with Larnach holding the key portfolios of Colonial Treasurer and Minister of Public Works. He remained in office until March 1878, when the Government sent him to London to negotiate a £3,000,000 loan. While there he arranged for the Bank of England to act as New Zealand's agent in this and similar financial transactions – an arrangement which ensured that New Zealand loans would receive the best possible treatment on the London financial market. He also acted as one of New Zealand's Commissioners at the Paris Exhibition and was awarded the C.M.G. for his services. On his return to New Zealand he found that his expected elevation to the Legislative Council had been prevented by the dispute involving Grey, Normanby, and Robinson and he remained out of Parliament until 1882.

In the latter year he successfully contested Peninsula against Bishop Moran and represented the constituency until 1890. In November 1884 Stout invited Larnach to join his ministry. Although he was unwilling to take office, Larnach subsequently agreed to do so upon condition that he was given a free hand with the Mines portfolio. He administered his Department with considerable success and gave the then languishing mining industry a much needed impetus. In this connection, his 1887 Mines Statement was the first comprehensive survey of the industry. Between 1890 and 1894 Larnach was out of Parliament; however, Ballance appointed him chairman of the Royal Commission which inquired into the Public Trust Office in 1891. In July 1894 he succeeded Pyke in the Tuapeka constituency, which he represented until his death. During his last term in the House Larnach gave the Liberal ministers much helpful advice on financial matters and showed Ward how he could finance his “advances to settlers” scheme without charging more than 3 per cent.

In his final years Larnach, who had invested heavily in the Colonial Bank, was constantly preoccupied with private financial difficulties which, on 12 October 1898, led him to commit suicide in one of the committee rooms of Parliament House. His tragic death came as a great shock to his many friends, both in and out of Parliament, for he was deservedly popular, being by nature openhanded and generous. Despite the story of his own private misfortunes, he was a most competent Minister of Finance and of Mines.

Larnach was married three times: first, in 1859 in Victoria, to Eliza Jane (died 1880), daughter of Richard Guise, of New South Wales; secondly, on 7 January 1882 at Warrington, Otago, to Mary Cockburn (died 1887), daughter of R. J. Alleyne, of Murrumbidgee, New South Wales – a half-sister of his first wife; and thirdly, on 27 January 1891, at Wellington, to Constance de Bathe, daughter of Alfred de Bathe Brandon. He had two sons and four daughters by his first marriage.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

Larnach and His Castle, Reed, A. H. (1950); Evening Star (Dunedin), 13 Oct 1898 (Obit); Otago Daily Times, 13 Oct 1898 (Obit); New Zealand Times, 13 Oct 1898 (Obit).

(1861–1917).

Social reformer and journalist.

A new biography of Lane, William appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

William Lane was born in Bristol on 6 September 1861. His father, a converted Protestant Irishman, was a gardener. Lane was educated at the Bristol Grammar School. At the age of 16 he went off to western Canada, where he worked as a compositor and later as a journalist. He married at the age of 21 and, in 1885, left for Brisbane to join his brothers. His experiences in North America had converted Lane to socialism. In Brisbane he worked on the Courier and Evening Observer until, in 1887, he established his own weekly paper, the Boomerang. Lane quickly became a power in Queensland Labour politics. He helped to form a Labour Federation; he raised funds for the London dockers' strike of 1889; and was active in the maritime and shearers' strikes of 1890–91. In March 1890 Lane sold the Boomerang and founded the Worker, which bore the motto “Socialism in Our Time”. A novel, The Working-man's Paradise, which he wrote under the pseudonym of John Miller, was published in 1892.

The defeat of the strikes convinced Lane that neither political nor industrial action could bring about socialism. His mind turned towards the establishment of a socialist community in some far-away country. Friends were sent to South America to look for suitable land. The New Australia Cooperative Settlement Association was formed, a ship was purchased and fitted out and, on 17 July 1893, Lane and his followers left Sydney on the Royal Tar for Paraguay, where the colony of New Australia was to be established. A number of New Zealanders were among Lane's colonists. Sir George Grey and Professor Bickerton sent messages of encouragement to New Australia. But already on the voyage out disagreements arose. At Christmas 1893 there was an upheaval when Lane expelled three men for getting drunk. His despotic behaviour as leader of the colony split the settlers into rival factions and, in 1894, he was forced to resign. With 45 adults and 12 children, Lane left New Australia for another part of Paraguay, where he established a second socialist community, called Cosme. After great hardships, conditions there slowly improved. Lane went to England in 1896 to recruit more colonists, particularly single women, but in August 1899 he resigned for good and left for England and, later, New Zealand. Within a few years Cosme ceased to function as a communal settlement.

The New Zealand Herald offered Lane employment as a leader writer but in January 1900 he left for Sydney to become editor of the new Worker published by the New South Wales Labour Council. His changed views, as shown in his support for the war in South Africa, quickly led to disagreements with his colleagues. In May, he resigned and returned to Auckland and the Herald. But the collapse of the New Australia and Cosme experiments had broken Lane's spirit. For the rest of his life he paid off the debts of Cosme but never spoke about his experiences there. “He passed”, says his biographer, “into the silence of the petit-bourgeois life of Auckland, New Zealand.” His weekly articles in the Herald, which he wrote under the pen name of Tohunga (a selection of these writings was published in 1917), showed his ability as a journalist and his mastery of the English language, but in content they were far removed from his fiery revolutionary writings of the nineties. In October 1913 Lane became editor of the New Zealand Herald. He had helped to found the National Defence League in 1906 and, on the outbreak of war, he took a great interest in soldiers' welfare and the Returned Soldiers' Association. He died in Auckland on 26 August 1917.

Frail, short sighted, and slightly lame from birth, Lane was an absolute idealist. It was his personal tragedy that he should have led the Australian Socialist movement into the blind alley of utopian colonies in South America.

by Herbert Otto Roth, B.A., DIP.N.Z.L.S., Deputy Librarian, University of Auckland.

William Lane and the Australian Labour Movement, Ross, L. (1937); Hail Tomorrow – a play in four acts, Palmer, V. (1947).

In a country as lately elevated as New Zealand has been, none of its major streams has reached that uniform bed grade where all waterfalls, rapids, lakes, and like phenomena resulting from inequalities of profile have disappeared, hence waterfalls and rapids are common. They occur mainly where bands or zones of hard rock alternate abruptly with weak rock in the country into which the rivers are cutting their channels. The hard bands that have locally delayed downcutting may be beds of hard sandstone or limestone in the weak-rock mudstone country, more resistant layers in the hard rock highland, or sheets of hard volcanic rock interbedded with less resistant material. Stretches of rapids occur very commonly, but abrupt breaks in grade with spectacular vertical water drop are relatively rarer.

Some of the highest and best known of these latter occur in the glaciated high country of the South Island south-west where streams in little “hanging” valleys plunge over the high steep walls of the canyons shaped by the glacier ice that formerly filled them. Of such are the well-known Sutherland Falls in the Arthur Valley that drains into Milford Sound. From a small lake basin (a glacial cirque) perched on the ridge above the valley the water falls in three leaps, a total distance of 1,904 ft. Flow may diminish to a trickle in a spell of fine weather, but in times of heavy rain similar falls occur at many places along the valley sides. Well known, too, as an example of this type is the Bowen Fall in Milford Sound itself.

Typical of the falls formed where a downcutting stream finds a layer of hard volcanic rock are the Wairua Falls near Whangarei, and the Huka Falls just below the outlet of the Waikato River from Lake Taupo. The profile of stream channels, such as those which the Waikato and its tributaries have cut in the unconsolidated material of the central volcanic plateau, is very frequently broken where the streams find hard bands of the interbedded ignimbrite sheets. So small falls (Huka) and rapids (Aratiatia) are very common in this volcanic country.

The Wairua Fall, North Auckland, is more spectacular than these because the water drops vertically over the face of a nearly horizontal basaltic sheet embedded in country made of much weaker material.

Typical of the falls which have developed where streams cutting down into weak mudstone (papa) country find a hard sandstone band, is that in the Mangawhero River near Raetihi. Small falls and rapids of similar origin are common enough in the courses of the Wanganui, Mokau, and other rivers that drain the mudstone plateau of the North Island west.

On the two large maps (1 in. = 16 miles) accompanying the earliest comprehensive report on rivers and waterfalls as likely sources of hydroelectric power (Appendix D. 1A to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1904), P. R. Hay lists no less than 78 waterfalls in the North Island and 163 in the South Island. Most of these represent steep descents (rapids) rather than vertical breaks (falls) in the stream profiles, but their number bears witness to the youth of the streams draining a mountainous terrain. G.J.

Lakes are formed when water lies in hollows in the land surface, usually due to faulting, warping or both; to recent volcanic action, or to glaciation. In coastal areas lakes are often found filling hollows in sand dune country or where bay mouths have been blocked by alongshore drift of shingle or sand. Lakes of all these types occur in New Zealand, but by far the largest are those in the volcanic interior of the North Island and in the recently glaciated South Island high country. One of the larger lakes (Waikaremoana) was formed by the blocking of the narrow channel that a river had cut across a high-standing ridge of the eastern scarpland of Hawke's Bay.

Lakes of the North Island

Taupo, in the upper catchment of the Waikato River, is the largest New Zealand lake, set almost in the very heart of the North Island. From it a long fault-bounded depression runs north-easterly and contains another large group of lakes filling hollows in the volcanic plateau. Here is the main hydrothermal district. Lakes of this latter group are Rotorua, Rotoiti, and Rotoehu, in the immediate neighbourhood of Rotorua itself; and Tarawera, Rotokakahi, Tikitapu, Okareka, Rotomahana, Okataina, Rotomakarui, and Rerewhakaaitu somewhat to the south-east of it. The lakes about Rotorua lie mainly within the catchment of the Kaituna River, while those of the south-eastern group overflow to the Tarawera.

All these lakes occupy local depressions associated with local warping and faulting, most, if not all, having also been the scene of violently explosive eruptions that have enlarged and shaped their basins. The most spectacular example of the type is Taupo itself. Its surface area is some 234 square miles; its depth is 350 ft in the southern part and 400 ft in the north where four local depressions are 50 to 100 ft deeper. Motutaiko Island and various hard-rock reefs stand up from the eastern floor while part of the western shore is lined by cliffs nearly 1,000 ft high. All these features seem to be associated with local extensions of rhyolitic lava. Though the water occupies only the lower part of a large tectonic basin, warping and faulting alone seem not enough to account for it. For miles around, the country is mantled with the pumice waste of the Taupo ash showers that bear witness to the violence of many explosive eruptions. The form and distribution of these indicate the site of the lake to be their source.

Recent studies also indicate that eruptions on a vast scale must have occurred within the last 2,000 years or so. The lake level seems to have been raised at least 100 ft, only to be lowered again by the rapid downcutting of the Waikato River outlet. This would be delayed where the outflow stream found the hard shelves of buried ignimbrite that form the Huka Falls and the Aratiatia Rapids.

On or about a line from Ruapehu to White Island, through the sunken lowland that contains all these lakes, most of the hot springs, geysers, and other hydrothermal features occur. With the lakes, they are all directly associated with the volcanic activity that accompanied the raising, warping, and faulting of this central part of the North Island.

In the North Auckland Peninsula are the small Lakes Takapuna and Omapere. The former, near Auckland city, lies in a small volcanic explosion crater, while the latter occupies a basin formed where an old lava flow obstructed the course of the Waitangi River.

Lake Waikaremoana, about 12 miles long, 6 miles in greatest width, and of very irregular outline, was formed by the drowning of a branching river valley system in its own water. The narrow gap cut by a tributary of the Wairoa River across a high ridge in the hills of eastern Hawke's Bay was blocked by a huge landslide falling away from the steep inner scarp face.

The only other notable lakes of the North Island are those in the lower valley of the Waikato River (Waikare and Whangape), together with a few small coastal lakes behind ridges of sand (as near Levin and Kaipara) or shingle (as Palliser Bay). The largest of these is the shallow Wairarapa lake.

South Island Lakes

Most of these are found in the high hard-rock country lately eroded by ice. In almost every major river valley are lakes formed by the ponding of water behind piles of glacial moraine or fans of shingle brought down from tributary valleys in the high bordering ranges. Perched high on the mountain slopes, too, are many minor lakelets or tarns, where water lies in ice-scoured hollows. Another type of little lake is often found in hollows in the moraine unevenly spread over the West Coast lowland. Indeed, the only notable lakes outside the glaciated highland are Waihola on the valley floor of the lower Taieri River, and the shallow coastal Lakes Ellesmere, Forsyth, and Grassmere, enclosed by barrier beaches of shingle swept across the front of former bays.

For convenience of summary, all the high country lakes may be grouped into those lying to the east and to the west of the main Alpine divide, and those in the northern valleys.

Almost every major river valley east of the divide has its glacial lakes, large and small, all of the same general type. Best known for their size and scenic grandeur are, of course, the so-called Southern Lakes of Fiordland, of the upper Clutha Valley, and of the Mackenzie basin in the upper catchment of the Waitaki.

The lakes of Fiordland lie along the eastern margin of the plateau. There are Te Anau, Manapouri, and Monowai draining to the Waiau River, and Hauroko and Poteriteri draining to the south coast by the valleys of lesser streams. All these are a legacy of the scouring, shaping, and deepening of highland valleys by ice and the ponding of the water by piles of moraine. From Te Anau and Manapouri long, narrow trough-shaped arms reach far back into the plateau itself, and similar troughs contain the waters of Monowai, Hauroko, and Poteriteri; all these with their high, steep enclosing walls might aptly be described as freshwater fiords.

In the Clutha Valley are the noble lakes of Wakatipu, Wanaka, and Hawea. Their outlet streams join at Cromwell to make New Zealand's largest river, the Clutha. Similarly, the upper catchment of the Waitaki contains the big lakes of the Mackenzie basin – Ohau, Tekapo, and Pukaki, all destined to contribute to the generation of electric power.

All the valleys of the main Canterbury rivers flowing east from the main divide contain glacial lakes, large and small. Perhaps the more notable of these are Heron and Coleridge, in the Rakaia, and Sumner in the Hurunui. Besides these, however, there is a host of lesser lakes. There are Taylor, Sheppard, Katrine, and Mason in the Hurunui; Pearson and Grasmere in the Waimakariri; Evelyn, Selfe, Catherine, Ida, and Lyndon in the Rakaia; and Clearwater, Howard, and Acland in the Ashburton, to note but a few.

The largest of the West Coast lakes are Brunner in the valley of the Arnold, tributary of the Grey, and Kaniere in the valley of the Hokitika. Farther south, in hollows in the heaps of glacial waste from the bordering ranges, are many picturesque little lakes; best known of these are Mapourika and Ianthe.

Most notable valley lakes of the South Island north are those in the upper catchment of the Buller. There are Rotoroa (8 square miles) and Rotoiti (2¾ square miles). Tennyson, in the upper valley of the Clarence, is a small lake of the same general type.

New Zealand being a narrow and mountainous country has short, swiftly flowing rivers of little use for navigation; most of those that traverse regions of hard-rock highland carry coarse shingle right to the sea. Stream systems adjust themselves both to slope and to structure of the country off which the water runs, as is very well shown by the pattern of channels that drain the western salient of Taranaki. Here is a simple pattern of radial streams all rising at or near the summit of Mt. Egmont. Yet another distinctive pattern is that of the freely branching streams of the Wanganui – Taranaki inland district where the country is made mainly of the weak mudstones locally known as papa. In sharp contrast again is the trellised pattern of those Hawke's Bay streams that cross parallel ridges of harder rock to reach the sea.

An almost ubiquitous feature of the valleys of New Zealand rivers is the occurrence of series of terraces left as the streams have cut their valleys downward. The history of these is rather complex and is related to such factors as intermittent uplift of the land and changing level of the sea in glacial and interglacial periods. Most of the minor features of the land have been made by the rivers that have dissected it.

North Island Rivers

(The approximate length of rivers in miles is given in parentheses.)

Deep in the interior of the North Island is the large dome-like highland complex of the volcanic mass of Ruapehu, and the Kaimanawa, Kaweka, and Ahimanawa Ranges of the hard-rock eastern axis. From this high and rugged region comes the run-off water that feeds the larger master streams, Waikato (220) and Rangitaiki flowing north, the Rangitikei (115) and Whangaehu (85) flowing south, and the Ngaruroro (85), Tutaekuri and Mohaka (80) flowing into Hawke Bay. To this wide bay, too, come the Tukituki (65) from the Ruahine highland, and the Wairoa (50) from the Huiarau Range.

From the Huiarau and Raukumara Ranges of the north-east emerge the Waipaoa (50), the Waiapu (55), the Motu, the Waioeka and the Whakatane (60). Of these, the Waipaoa is of special interest for its wide, open delta plain on which Gisborne is based. As a result of the deforestation of the steep slopes of the bordering mudstone hills, flood control for the protection of the plain has become a problem of first concern.

The Waikato, stabilised in flow by Lake Taupo, the site of hydroelectric plants, and containing in its lower valley (and that of its tributary, the Waipa) much rich farming land, is New Zealand's largest and, perhaps, most important river. Just east of and parallel to it, the Waihou (90) and Piako (60) traverse the former swampland of the Hauraki Plain to reach the Firth of Thames.

The largest river of the North Auckland Peninsula is the (Northern) Wairoa (95) which, rising in the hills of the north east, flows into Kaipara Harbour. Its valley gave access to the great kauri forests now cleared away. The western rivers are established in deep, branching trenches cut in the mudstone plateau of the Wanganui-Taranaki inland; the largest of these is the Wanganui itself (140) which rises in the high interior of the Central Plateau about Ruapehu. Similar in type are many other streams of which the Mokau (75), Waitara (65), and Patea (65) are the largest.

East of the main divide is an important group of three streams: the Tukituki (65) flowing to Hawke Bay, the Ruamahanga (70) to Palliser Bay, and the Manawatu (100) that crosses the divide by the Manawatu Gorge to reach the west coast near Foxton. These rivers together occupy the Hawke Bay – Palliser Bay lowland, one of the most significant features of the North Island landscape.

As the mountain axis nears Wellington, west coast streams draining from it are short and steep of gradient; such are the Ohau, Otaki, and Waikanae. The Hutt (35) flows in a fault-angle valley into Wellington Harbour.

South Island Rivers

All the northern part of the South Island is a complex of huge crust blocks bounded by faults. These fracture lines guide the main rivers; the only one flowing across the grain of the country by a series of narrow gorges is the Buller (105). So the pattern of rivers is very simple. Into Golden Bay flow the Aorere (45) and the Takaka (45); to Tasman Bay the Motueka (75) and Waimea; and to the north-east coast the Wairau (105), Awatere (70), and Clarence (125). Of special significance are the valleys of the Wairau and the Buller; together they provide the one easy routeway across this mountainous country from Blenheim to Westport.

Of the West Coast rivers much the largest is the Grey (75); the others are short swift torrents descending from the Alpine axis to cross the West Coast lowland in wide terraced trenches. Such are the Taramakau (45), Hokitika (40), Wanganui (35), Whataroa (35), Waiho, Karangarua (30), Haast (60), and Arawata (45). Making and maintaining the roadway across these to South Westland is a continuing problem. By contrast, the big North Canterbury rivers, the Waiau (110) and the Hurunui (90), cross more open range and basin country, having cut narrow gorges across the hard-rock ranges that enclose the basins.

The Waimakariri (93), Rakaia (95), Ashburton (67), and Rangitata (75) still have minor glaciers at or near their sources, these being puny remnants of the great tongues of ice that must have filled their valleys but a few thousand years ago. These are the main rivers that built the Canterbury Plain of shingle brought from the high country. In the plain itself they flow in wide terraced channels along courses subject to capricious change. Of special interest to the nearby city of Christchurch is the control of the lower Waimakariri. There are smaller rivers in mid and South Canterbury such as the Waipara, Ashley, Selwyn, Orari, Opihi, Pareora, and Waihao, but these are rather “front country” rivers fed to flood mainly by rains from an easterly quarter in contrast to the nor-westerly storms that flood those of the back country.

The great rivers of the south are the Waitaki (135), draining the glacial Lakes Tekapo, Pukaki, and Ohau of the Mackenzie basin; the Clutha (210) with its Lakes Wanaka, Hawea, and Wakatipu; and the Waiau (115) draining Te Anau and Manapouri. The catchments of all these three major rivers reach back to that highest part of the Alpine divide that extends from Mt. Cook to Mt. Aspiring. From the upper catchment of the Clutha, the Lindis Pass leads to the Waitaki and the Haast Pass to South Westland.

Other important southern rivers that do not reach as far back as the main divide are the Taieri (125), Mataura (120), Oreti (105), and Aparima (65). Waste brought down by the last three has made the extensive Southland Plain.

By contrast with the ancient stable mass of Australia, New Zealand is part of the unstable zone of mountains (the so-called Mobile Zone) that contains the European Alpine system, the Himalayas, the Indonesian Islands, and New Guinea. Only the eastern edge of Australia has been caught up in the mountain-making (orogenic) movements that have raised great ridges above the floor of this part of the Pacific Ocean. The oceanographer's chart, compiled from soundings of ocean depths, shows how the main islands of New Zealand rise from a wide submarine shelf, and now two main arcs of the South-west Pacific Mobile Zone meet in the middle of the North Island. One of these comes in from New Guinea by way of New Caledonia to the Auckland Peninsula; the other from Fiji and Tonga to the East Cape – Cook Strait ranges. Consequently, New Zealand is a long, narrow, mountainous country; its islands are the unsubmerged parts of complex mountain ridges separated from Australia by the wide and deep trough containing the Tasman Sea.

The grain of the Auckland Peninsula is generally north-west to south-east, though its mountain ridges are relatively low (up to 2,750 ft in Coromandel). The East Cape – Cook Strait ranges trend north-east to south-west and are much higher (5,753 ft in Hikurangi). Where these two mountain lines meet is concealed beneath the volcanic accumulations of the central plateau. The most prominent of the volcanic mountains are in this North Island zone: Ruapehu, Tongariro, and Ngauruhoe in the interior, and Mt. Egmont in the west.

The north-east to south-west trend continues in the South Island beyond Cook Strait until, in the vicinity of Mt. Aspiring, it swings abruptly to the south-east. It is on this general framework that the mountainous islands of New Zealand are built, the highest, steepest, and most extensive ranges being in the South Island (up to 12,349 ft in Mt. Cook). Indeed, some two-thirds of the South Island is hard-rock highland of one kind or another.

Most of the hard-rock mountains of the North Island and the South Island east are made of tough fine-grained sedimentary sandstones and argillites, ranging in age from Triassic to Cretaceous. The Great Divide in the South Island is the Alpine fault; west of this the highland is mainly made of granites and ancient crystallines, while in Central Otago it is of metamorphic schist. But with all their diversity of kind these rocks possess the common property of hardness.

The history of the making of the highland may be briefly stated thus:

In a Mesozoic sea (Triassic and Jurassic), vast deposits of fine grained sands and silts were laid, to be tightly compressed and raised to form a complex highland in the early Cretaceous. This highland was worn down to its roots by erosion through most of the Tertiary period, submerged and covered with a thick mantle of sediments conveniently called the covering beds. These were mainly silts and muds with occasional harder bands of limestone or sandstone embedded in them. Then in the later Tertiary and, continuing well on into the Pleistocene in some places, came the great uplift, the Kaikoura Orogeny, a period of vigorous mountain-making activity that gave New Zealand its present general form and outline.

The new land arched up by tremendous compressive forces was broken into massive blocks by extensive faults. From the rapidly rising mountain blocks, the weak-rock cover was quickly stripped away and the hard-rock masses themselves were carved and wasted by vigorous erosion. So the mountains of today are the product of the orogenic processes and the erosion to which the emerging highland would be immediately subjected. As erosion proceeds, the hard-rock ridges stand out more and more boldly, while in the South Island erosion by ice gives a special character to the ranges and valleys of the high country.

Thus the high-standing mountains of New Zealand are made of the hard rocks of the understructure, and are best developed in the South Island, much of the North Island being weak-rock hill country mainly made of mudstone, locally known as papa.

The most prominent single feature of the North Island is the hard-rock mountain core that extends from Cook Strait to the Bay of Plenty, a topographic barrier between east and west breached only by the Manawatu Gorge. This continuous mountain core, known locally by a variety of names – the Rimutaka, Tararua, Ruahine – is an assemblage of hard-rock crust blocks bounded in the east by major faults; in the general direction of these is the almost continuous valley lowland between Hawke and Palliser Bays. Between this and the east coast, some minor ridges of hard rock project through the cover but none is of considerable height.

Similarly in the Auckland Peninsula, hard-rock ridges project through the cover in many places though none is as high as 3,000 ft. North of the Egmont-Ruapehu line, however, are most of New Zealand's diverse volcanic forms. From its broad base Ruapehu itself rises to 9,175 ft, with Ngauruhoe (7,515 ft), and Tongariro (6,517 ft) just to the north of it. The North Island west is dominated by the single cone of Egmont (8,260 ft). Banks Peninsula is the only notable volcanic form in the South Island, but this is much older, has been much more reduced by erosion, and is only 3,014 ft in maximum height.

The South Island, almost wholly mountainous, is a complex assemblage of crust blocks or slabs raised high in the Kaikoura orogeny and vastly modified by subsequent erosion. Perhaps the best example of such a mountain landscape is that of Nelson and Marlborough, made of a series of north-east to south-west trending fault-bounded block mountains. Of these faults, those defining the valleys of the Wairau, Awatere, and Clarence Rivers are perhaps the most sharply defined, and the two Kaikoura ranges themselves the most striking examples of this unit crust block type of mountain range.

In North Canterbury, similar fault-bounded crust blocks enclose wide basin plains such as those of Culverden and Hanmer, but at the “narrow waist” of the island the mountain zone is tightly compressed to a width of some 50 miles. In the west it is bounded abruptly by the Alpine fault marking the base there of the Southern Alps proper.

Again, in South Canterbury and in Central Otago, the mountain country opens out into the range and basin type, the Mackenzie and the Maniototo being the largest intermontane basins. In the highland of Canterbury, western Otago, and Fiordland, ice sculpture has left a special mark in mountain ridges and valleys alike. Fiordland is an ancient hard-rock plateau showing now a remarkable uniformity of summit level of the ridges into which it has been carved by running water and, intermittently, by ice.

The outline of the mountainous islands of New Zealand reflects the complexity of their structure and later geological history. The coast, as usually defined, is a zone of indeterminate width adjacent to the sea; the line where land and water meet is better defined as the coastline or shoreline. The kind of country against which the sea comes to rest in New Zealand shows remarkable diversity in short distances, the most striking contrasts being those between mudstone uplands readily trimmed off into long lines of cliffs (as in the North Island east and west), and the hard rock highlands, especially where mountain ranges run end on into the sea (as in Cook Strait, eastern Bay of Plenty, and the South Island south-west). Elsewhere long stretches of very simple shoreline mark the edges of alluvial plains built out into the sea (as in Canterbury, Westland, and Manawatu-Horowhenua).

Moreover, New Zealand is a heterogeneous assemblage of crust blocks that have not been moved by the young mountain-making processes to the same extent in all parts of the country. As some have moved upwards and others downwards in late geological time, contiguous parts of the coast may show quite different and unrelated features. The Marlborough Sounds, for example, seem to be contained in a unit area depressed to drown a complex system of branching river valleys, while adjacent areas affected by upward movement have relatively simple shorelines. So a special and striking feature of the outline of New Zealand is its diversity; even small unit areas may display considerable local variety. In spite of all this diversity, however, there are few good natural harbours with ready access to the more closely settled and productive parts of the country.

In the narrow Auckland peninsula, the north-east to south-west grain of the country is, in general, parallel to the shoreline which has been affected by extensive submergence. This has produced a system of branching bays and inlets now occupied by tidal mudflats and bounded by bold headlands. The western coastline has been profoundly modified by the building of sand beaches and spits, this having the general effect of making entry to the inlets very difficult. Inlets of the east coast, not so affected by alongshore sand drift, are deeper and more widely open, giving much better and more accessible sites for making good harbours for ships. The contrast in kind between east and west is well displayed by the Waitemata and Manukau Harbours; on the former Auckland has grown as New Zealand's major port; the latter remains inaccessible and undeveloped. The other main centres of harbour development on the Auckland east coast are at Whangarei and Tauranga. Access to the latter (at Mt. Maunganui) is by a narrow gap in the beach barrier built right across the front of a wide and shallow bay.

From East Cape to Cape Palliser the coastline is, for the most part, a line of cliffs made by the rapid trimming back of the spur ends in a recently elevated weak-rock hill country. This kind of coast is never easy of access from the sea; the main centres of local settlement on it are the valley plains at Napier, Wairoa, and Gisborne. At Napier and Gisborne artificial harbours have been made.

Similarly most of the North Island to the west ends at the sea in cliffs (except for the dune-fringed plain of Manawatu-Horowhenua), and the coastline is unbroken by any major inlet from Porirua to Kawhia. Rivermouth ports, as at Wanganui, Patea, and Waitara, cannot compete with the main western harbour at New Plymouth, built at a point where remnant stumps of a volcano much older than Egmont project into the sea.

New Zealand's main central harbour of Wellington has been made in Port Nicholson. Here local down-warping of the mountain spurs that run end on into Cook Strait has made a wide and sheltered arm of the sea, but a serious disadvantage of this as a natural harbour site is the difficulty of access to the hinterland.

In the South Island the Cook Strait coastline transects the grain of the country. In the drowned sector of the Marlborough Sounds is the port of Picton, but its local hinterland is limited by the topography. Its main role is one of a route terminal for the South Island main trunk road and railway, and for the new Cook Strait steamer service. The heart of the South Island in the north is rather at Nelson and the Tasman Bay lowland. The margin of this is a complex of the cliffs of the Moutere Hills and the sand and shingle beaches of the Waimea Plain enclosing extensive lagoons. Here the port of Nelson has been built to service the north coast settlements. This north coast is one of abrupt contrasts between the rugged ends of the mountain ranges, the edges of the bayhead plains, and the long curving sandbank of Farewell Spit partly enclosing Golden Bay.

Despite all the diversity of land on the West Coast, alongshore drift of shingle and sand with the strong northerly current makes the shoreline remarkably even all the way from Martins Bay to the Farewell Spit. At the river mouths, too, off-shore bars make entry from the sea difficult and uncertain.

Fiordland, in the far south-west, is a distinctive topographic unit with its long, narrow arms of the sea filling deep trough-shaped valleys that are a legacy of the ice ages. Here are natural anchorages in plenty, but flat land at the heads of the fiords is so limited, and access to any productive hinterland so difficult, that there no good sites for the making of ports.

In the rest of the southern South Island, the coastal country changes abruptly in short distances, one of the most spectacular shorelines being that between the mouths of the Mataura and Clutha Rivers. But on all this southern coast the only two harbour sites of any significance are those at Bluff and Dunedin. Behind the isolated hard rock mass of Bluff Hill and the sandbank enclosing the adjacent shallow estuary, the harbour of Bluff has lately been rebuilt. Its hinterland is the whole rich province of Southland.

The Otago Harbour is a long, narrow arm of the sea made by the tying of a rocky island to the mainland by the sand bank on which South Dunedin is built. Port facilities are at Dunedin itself at the head of the inlet, and Port Chalmers some nine miles nearer the entrance.

On all the rest of the east coast of the South Island, the only other extensive sheltered waters are in the embayments of Banks Peninsula. Elsewhere the coastline is remarkably uniform though the kind of coastal country shows much variety. The main harbour is that of Lyttelton but it is not a very good natural site for a port; access to the neighbouring plains is not easy, and making the port itself has involved the building of costly breakwaters.

On the open east coast are ports at Oamaru and Timaru. The former is sheltered somewhat in the lee of Cape Wanbrow, but making the latter has required the building of a big breakwater. This has locally halted the alongshore drift of shingle and behind it the popular sandy beach of Caroline Bay steadily grows. The front of the Canterbury Plain has been trimmed off by the sea, and the shingle, drifting north along the shore, makes the big barrier enclosing Lake Ellesmere. North of Banks Peninsula sand accumulates in the sheltered Pegasus Bay; here on a dune-fringed shoreline extending for some 30 miles almost to the Waipara River, are several popular beach resorts.

On the north-east coast of the South Island are long straight lines of weak-rock cliffs, but occasionally (notably near Kaikoura) hard rock hills plunge steeply into the sea; here main road and railway alike cling precariously to the very edge of the land. In general, however, this is a coastline of recent elevation unbroken by any deep inlets.

The Northern Region

Just as the great Alpine fault divides east from west, the Hope fault seems to mark off the north as something distinct from the rest of the South Island. Following the line of the Hope tributary of the Waiau River, and the middle Waiau itself to Hanmer, it swings round north-east along the line of the inland valley route to Kaikoura. All the country north of it is mountainous, penetrated by deep and narrow fault-angle valleys with isolated pockets of coastal lowland about its ragged margin. These are the centres of almost all the closer settlement, especially in Golden Bay (Takaka), Tasman Bay (Nelson and Motueka), the Wairau Plain (Blenheim), and the lower Awatere (Seddon). Along much of the north-east coast, both road and railway cling to the base of the mountains, with the only considerable pocket of valley lowland at Kaikoura.

The north-west, containing the Mt. Arthur (5,834 ft) plateau and the Tasman Mountains, is particularly rugged and inaccessible. The narrow valleys of its Takaka, Anatoki, Aorere, Heaphy, and Karamea Rivers give ready access only to the fringes of this highland granite country.

The mountains of the north-east stand out more sharply as unit ranges because they are separate crust blocks bounded by the faults that guide the main rivers. Most spectacular are the two Kaikoura Ranges, with Tapuaenuku rising to 9,465 ft. Most prominent of the valleys, too, is that of the Wairau along the line that takes the Alpine fault itself north-east to the sea. With the Waimea fault (at Nelson), this encloses the triangular zone containing the Marlborough Sounds country of hard-rock hills (greywacke and schist). Local subsidence of this whole zone has drowned the intricate pattern of its valleys to make Pelorus and Queen Charlotte Sounds with their many branching inlets. This typical ria coast has become a very popular holiday resort.

In the west, the catchment of the Buller is well known for its local diversity of scene, especially for the glacial lakes of Rotoroa and Rotoiti at its head and for the several gorges it has cut across a succession of mountain ridges. But the high country of the rest of the South Island north seems to be not so widely known because so much of it is difficult of access. Main roads to Westport cross it only by the Lewis Pass route from Canterbury, by the Wairau-Buller route from Blenheim, and by the Tasman Bay lowland – Buller valley route from Nelson. The main highway from Christchurch to Nelson clings to the coast for most of the way.

The Midland Zone

A section across the South Island from, say, Christchurch to Hokitika would show how the central hard-rock highland is compressed to a narrow waist and bordered by the piedmont lowlands of Westland and the Canterbury Plain. Its front ranges rise from the inner edge of the Canterbury Plain like a wall. In North and South Canterbury, however, the inner highland opens out into range and basin forms with hard-rock ridges rising above weak-rock downlands, or enclosing basin plains and valley plains made of the ubiquitous greywacke gravel.

In the landscapes of the midland zone these quite distinctive units are recognisable at once. The hard-rock highland, 50 miles or more wide, rises gently west to the main axis of the Southern Alps to be cut off abruptly by the great Alpine fault. The Canterbury Plain is an apron of shingle spread out in front of the highland as huge coalescing shingle fans built by the big rivers that cross it. In the downlands of North and South Canterbury are discontinuous patches of the weaker (Tertiary) rocks, above which lower ranges of the hard-rock understructure stand out in bold contrast. Banks Peninsula is an entirely separate unit, an elliptical dome of basic volcanic rocks (mainly andesites and basalts) erupted from two centres at Lyttelton and Akaroa, to be since tied to the mainland plain by a neck of low swampy country. West of the Alpine highland is the piedmont lowland of Westland, reaching north into the wide open valley of the Grey River behind the coastal Paparoa Range. Each of these topographic units has its own characteristic landscape features.

With the exception of a schistose core of the Southern Alps proper, the Canterbury high country is made of tough greywacke and more friable argillites. This is the stuff of the screes of waste that mantle the bare tops of the ranges and pour down into the valley bottoms to be taken away by the rivers in flood to make the bordering plain. The size of the plain and the thickness of its gravels (over 2,000 ft in the old oil bore at Chertsey) is some measure of the amount of erosion. Narrow branching valleys (locally known as gorges) have been cut deep in the highland. Thus the high country is a maze of ridges and valleys; a peculiar uniformity of level of ridge summits suggests a possibility that the whole complex of ranges has been made by the carving up of an old plateau.

Ice has left its mark by straightening valleys, smoothing their walls, and leaving scattered remnants of old moraines and glacial lakes. The big rivers Hurunui, Waimakariri, Rakaia, Ashburton, and Rangitata drain this high country by a maze of streams that have carved out deep narrow valleys. Ice filled them all but a few thousand years ago; floods of water from its rapid melting spread coarse gravel over their floors and out on to the bordering plain. This country, clothed in tussock on the front ranges and beech forest inland, is the land of the high-country sheep runs. Easily accessible only by the valleys of the major rivers, it has become a mountain playground.

The Canterbury Plain, 120 miles long and some 40 miles in greatest width, is a vast apron of greywacke gravel. The rivers, which made it out of the waste from the valleys they carved in the highland, now flow across it in terraced trenches, each let down into its own big alluvial fan. Its surface rises fairly steeply inland, at a grade of 30 to 45 ft or so per mile, to heights of over 1,200 ft at the base of the bordering ranges. Here are Canterbury's richest farmlands, varying much in quality according to the thickness of the finer silts that cover the raw river gravels.

North and south the plain merges into downland country. The South Canterbury downlands, reaching from Geraldine to Oamaru across the Waitaki River, seem to be the remains of some older surface planed out in front of the hard-rock ranges Those of North Canterbury, however, are of a more distinctive range and basin type. The biggest of the basins is that of the Waiau-Hurunui about Culverden. The rivers here flow east to the sea across a series of hard-rock ranges, leaving the basin floors filled with greywacke gravels. Remnants of Tertiary rocks with prominent bands of harder limestones lend further variety to the North Canterbury scene.

Banks Peninsula stands apart as a volcanic pile, built up on a base of the same greywacke as makes the central highland. Its twin volcanoes (at Akaroa and Lyttelton) built up a dome-shaped mass with rather gentle outer slopes and a maximum height of 3,014 ft (Mt. Herbert). Ages of stream erosion have left a radial pattern of deep valleys that have since been drowned by the sea to make a coast of intricate outline. The biggest of the drowned valleys are those made from the breaching of the old craters of Akaroa and Lyttelton.

The piedmont lowland of Westland is a complex terrain. Granite ridges west of the Alpine fault, dumps of moraine spread right out to the sea by glaciers of the recent past, and re-sorted gravels of the terraced river valleys are all distinguishable in it. Most of the lowland is cutover forest country; its primitive cover was rain forest with open patches of pakihi land and extensive swampy zones. North of Greymouth is the coastal Paparoa Range, mantled on parts of its crest and along its flanks by the younger (Tertiary) beds that contain much of the West Coast coal. Inland of the coastal range is the wide open valley lowland of the Grey River.

The Otago Range and Basin Country

The pattern of the mountains of Central Otago and inland South Canterbury is best seen from the air, or from the summit of such a range as the Benger near Roxburgh or the Dunstan near Cromwell. Heights are very uniform and skylines very even; the whole mosaic of mountains appears to have grown out of the raising, warping, and faulting of the ancient plateau. Individual ranges are simple blocks enclosing wide open basin plains or long narrow fault-angle valley plains. The simplest form is the tilted block with one gentle back slope, a steep scarp face, and a curiously even summit line. Occasionally a range (e.g., the Rock and Pillar) may have both its faces as steep scarp slopes because it is bounded by faults on both sides, taking the form of a horst.

The rocks of Central Otago are the monotonously uniform schists, laminated in structure and flaking away on exposure to weather. But scattered tors of tougher material may give local surfaces a very rugged aspect. The schist passes into greywacke north of the Waitaki River.

The largest of the inland basins are the Mackenzie in the upper catchment of the Waitaki, and the Maniototo drained by the Taieri. Indeed, almost all the true range and basin country is contained within the catchments of the Waitaki, Clutha, Taieri, and Shag Rivers. Their valleys are the main routes of access to Central Otago, but the traveller by road, confined to the valley floors, sees little of the pattern of the mountains. The 12-mile-long gorge, cut by the Clutha across the Dunstan Range between Cromwell and Clyde, is typical of several of its kind in this country – of mountain ranges that have been raised as independently moving crust blocks across the paths of rivers. Below the gorge the basin floor, too, has obviously had something of a complex history. High terraces near Alexandra are remnants of an older, higher basin floor; the history of the basin seems to have been one of successive filling and re-excavation by the river. This would be connected with the waxing and waning of floods from the melting of the ice that once filled the upper valleys about the lakes Wakatipu, Wanaka, and Hawea.

The Mackenzie basin, especially, shows marks of the glaciation of the recent past. In it are the big glacial lakes of Ohau, Pukaki, and Tekapo; on its floor are moulds of moraine, just as the retreating ice has left them. Elsewhere the waste has been respread and re-sorted by melt water floods, leaving the present lake outlet streams entrenched in stretches of more level plain. Standing above the basin floor, too, are hard-rock mounds and ridges (e.g., Mt. John at Tekapo) scraped smooth by the ice that rode over them but a few thousand years ago. The present Tasman Glacier, about the base of Mt. Cook, is but a puny remnant of the ice that once filled this biggest of our intermontane basins.

The range and basin country is topographically unique. The pattern of some of its characteristics forms and the story of their making was first clearly described in Cotton's classic paper on the region. The country is unique, too, for its semi-arid climate. Its primitive tussock cover has been much depleted since European settlers took it over. Today some of this country looks like a desert, though with control of the rabbit infestation the tussock and grass cover seems to be slowly coming back.

Fiordland

For long the focal point of interest in this mountainous country of the far south-west has been Milford Sound. Access to it is by way of the Milford Track from the head of Lake Te Anau, by the Eglinton Valley – Homer Tunnel road, or by sea from the west. By whichever of these routes he takes, the visitor sees little more than the valleys in which he is confined. These are deep, narrow troughs with very steep sides and flat floors that end abruptly inland in high rock walls. This is the typical form of mountain valleys shaped by ice.

The whole sweep of the Fiordland terrain is seen only from the air, and modern aerial photographs show its maze of mountain ridges to be remarkably uniform in height. It seems to be an ancient plateau rising abruptly from the Waiau Valley in the east and from the Tasman Sea in the west. The sea is very deep close inshore and the western spur ends are trimmed off to a straight line by the Alpine fault.

So Fiordland seems to be a very distinct topographic unit, a high plateau in which deep valleys have been carved and later shaped by ice. The “sounds” are true fiords and would be more properly called such; they are glacial valleys, shaped and deepened by ice scour, and drowned by the sea as the ice melted away. The narrow arms of the Lakes Te Anau, Manapouri, Monowai, Hauroko, and Poteriteri that penetrate the eastern edge of the plateau are identical in form; they might aptly be called fresh-water fiords.

Geologically this country is one of the oldest parts of New Zealand. It is made mainly of coarse gneisses and intrusive igneous rocks with some very ancient sedimentary beds (Ordovician) and a few Tertiary deposits on the margin, notably about Preservation Inlet. Stewart Island is made of similar old hard rocks, and Foveaux Strait, which separates it from the mainland, is little more than 100 ft deep. Stewart Island is not so high as Fiordland, its highest point (Mt. Anglem) being only 3,214 ft.

Southland

Variety of landscape forms in Southland reflects a somewhat complex structure; it is here that the main mountain axis swings round to the south-east. The mountains, made mainly of greywackes and similar old, hard sedimentary rocks with occasional outcrops of intrusive volcanics are, however, not very high. There are some extensive but scattered areas of the younger Tertiary beds, too, in undulating hills and downland. In these are found the valuable Southland coals and limestones. But it is the large alluvial plains made by the Mataura, Oreti, Aparima, and Waiau Rivers that comprise the productive heart of this rich province.

Specially prominent in the west are the Takitimu and Longwood Ranges, and the Hokonuis stand out as lower hard-rock hills above the valley plain of the middle Mataura River. In the south-east again, in the triangle between the lower Clutha and Mataura Rivers and the coast, is a zone of rugged hard-rock hills. The road from Fortrose to the Catlins reveals an attractive variety of coastal scene where the sea comes to rest against the base of these.

The plains of Southland are much the most significant features of the local landscape. They vary in kind and in quality from the stony stretches in the upper basins of the Oreti and Aparima to the rich alluvial lowlands in the middle and lower courses of these and the Mataura Rivers. Here are some of the richest farmlands of New Zealand. Yet again, however, they change to the poor Awarua swamplands just east of Invercargill. From Balclutha to Gore a wide belt of gently undulating lowland takes the main road and railway routes north. Here, too, is a landscape of rich farmland.

The Northern Peninsula

This part of New Zealand is very different from the rest of the country; its “grain” is north-west to south-east for it belongs to the complex island arc that comes in from the direction of New Guinea and New Caledonia. Its broad base, or root, is buried deep beneath the volcanic material of the inland plateau but, narrow and very ragged in outline to the north, it is almost severed in two at the site of Auckland city. Within its wider base are the lesser peninsula of Coromandel and the open valley plains of the Waikato-Waipa and Waihou-Piako river systems. These alluvial plains are the productive heart of the peninsula.

Variety in a short distance is the keynote of the peninsula terrain, and surface forms reflect the nature of the local rocks of which they are made. Rocks of the hard greywacke understructure stand out above residual patches of weaker beds of the Tertiary cover in scattered ridges of steep and rugged aspect, but these are only of moderate height, indeed, no part of the peninsula territory is as high as 3,000 ft. Scattered patches of volcanic rock, too, give local variety of surface forms as in Coromandel Peninsula, Pirongia, the Auckland city area, and throughout the narrow north. North of Auckland city the only alluvial plains of considerable size are those about Ruawai and Kaitaia.

In the north-west, however, and in the narrow neck, or tombolo, that ties distant Reinga to the mainland, coastal forms are made of older sands, raised, consolidated, and eroded. Newer sands, still on the move, pile up in coastal dunes in many places and the only effective way of stabilising these is by the planting of marram grass and trees. Alongshore drift of sand has made this west coast remarkably straight by comparison with the east with its wide branching bays and rocky headlands.

In the wider base of the peninsula there are strong topographic contrasts between the rugged hills of the west, the terraced lowlands of the river valleys, and the Kaimai-Coromandel ranges in the east. The valley plains are mainly made of pumice sands and silts, with extensive beds of peat. In all the peninsula there is no sharper contrast than that between the Kaimai-Coromandel upland and the low Hauraki Plains from which it rises abruptly in a steep fault scarp. This remarkable plain, only a little above the surface of the sea, has been made by the filling of a once much larger Firth of Thames on the floor of a fault-bounded trough or graben.

The Mountain Axis and East Coast Hills

By contrast with the northern peninsula, this eastern part of the North Island is aligned north-east to south-west. It carries the mountain structures of the South Island from Cook Strait to the Bay of Plenty, and the ranges of its high, hard-rock core dominate the North Island scene. These ranges are a complex of faulted blocks, the pattern of faulting becoming extremely complex in the north-east. A convenient, if perhaps somewhat arbitrary, western boundary of this zone might be set at the line of the Kaingaroa fault.

This is the North Island high country; though its mountain summits rarely exceed 5,000 ft, they stand out boldly above the weak-rock hills about their base. The weak rocks, especially displayed in a wide belt of hilly country on the eastern flanks of the axis, are mainly mudstones. But interbedded with them are harder bands of sandstone and limestone which were tilted when the whole of this eastern zone, caught up in the mountain making, was warped and broken by faults, mainly with a north-easterly trend.

Thus the whole pattern of the resulting landscape is closely related to the structure of the country. Rapid erosion of the uplifted land has revealed the hard-rock core and found the harder bands in the covering beds. On these an array of scarpland forms has developed. Long ridges with gentle backslopes facing the sea and steeper scarp slopes inland give a special character to the coastal hill country north of Hawke Bay. Rivers now flow in deep terraced trenches across this country from the higher mountains of the axis that has been exposed by rapid erosion.

From Hawke Bay to Palliser Bay an almost continuous valley lowland lies in front of the Ruahine, Tararua, and Rimutaka Ranges; a lowland drained (and enlarged to its present form) by the Tukituki, Upper Manawatu, and Ruamahanga River systems. Here are the most extensive of the lowland plains of the North Island east. To the east of this lowland again is a wide belt of hill country where local ridges of the hard rock of the understructure outcrop above the eroded cover to give a ragged surface in a land of only moderate height.

Recent studies in the Wellington area show that surfaces on which the weak rock cover was laid and since completely stripped away are still clearly recognisable. The story of the raising, warping, faulting, and eroding that have made the present landscape becomes very clear. One of the most spectacular and best preserved of the great faults that blocked out the pattern of the present surface is the Wellington fault itself, which defines the western edge of the Hutt Valley.

The North Island West

Most of the North Island west of the main divide is of difficult terrain but rather simple structure; when seen from the air, from a high point like Mt. Egmont, or even from Mt. Messenger – which is merely a ridge summit on the main highway between two local river catchments – the Taranaki-Wanganui inland shows a very even skyline. An old land surface seems to rise inland in two main tiers or steps. A maze of steep ridges with their sharp crests rising only gently inland is all that remains of an old plateau form. It has been cut to pieces by all the branching tributaries of the master streams like the Mokau, Waitara, Wanganui, and Rangitikei that drain it. The valleys are deep and narrow, the ridges steep and closely spaced with little summit area. Access to this country in the days of its primitive forest cover was most difficult. Even now the valleys of the master streams are its only easy routeways. Such is the wide open terraced valley of the Rangitikei which takes railway and main highway north.

The rocks of the region are mainly mudstones and sandy beds, but locally there are beds of harder sandstone and extensive thick layers of limestone. One such is the Te Kuiti limestone in which the celebrated Waitomo Caves represent solution effects characteristic of this kind of country. This broad zone of sedimentary rocks seems to have been raised with little disturbance of their nearly horizontal bedding, though there are some major faults and inland places where the hard rock of the understructure comes to or near the surface. Such a weak rock upland in a region of abundant rain would be rapidly and closely dissected by a system of closely spaced branching streams. Where the master streams from the upland cross the coastal zone of lesser height, stretching all the way from the Rangitikei to New Plymouth, valleys are not so closely spaced, but are wide, open, and terraced. Such are the lower valleys of the Rangitikei and Wanganui and the lesser streams parallel to these. Wanganui city is sited on the valley floor of such a channel cut in this mudstone country.

The Manawatu alluvial plain is merely a newer, lower plain built out in front of this rapidly wasting upland. It merges southward into the Horowhenua coast plain, a complex of shingle fans from the bordering mountains, and coastal dunes. The steep and difficult terrain of the west has therefore been made out of the rapid destruction of a two-tiered surface and the building of a new plain at a lower level.

Mt. Egmont, standing distinct and apart, dominates the Taranaki scene. As noted already, Taranaki may be said to owe all it is and all it has to its protection by the hard rock base of this western volcano.

The Volcanic Plateau

The belt of recent volcanic activity with all its associated hydrothermal phenomena is only a narrow strip running north-east from Ruapehu to White Island. The noble mountain of Ruapehu (9,175 ft) and the lesser masses of Tongariro (6,517 ft), Ngauruhoe (7,515 ft), Tarawera, and White Island have piled up round local vents; but other eruptions of a violently explosive kind have spread showers of “ash” and sheets of the harder ignimbrite far and wide, blotting out the features of the former surface. Main centres of these are about Taupo and Rotorua where groups of lakes, large and small, fill hollows in the floor of a big trough-like sag in the plateau surface. Here the country has been much warped and faulted, caught up in the mountain making that raised the eastern ranges.

Most of the rocks of the region are acidic tuffs made of consolidated volcanic ash, mainly pumice. Of special importance are the ignimbrites that seem to have spread out over long distances from vents not now visible, levelling out extensive surfaces like that of the Kaingaroa Plain. It is thought that they must have travelled close to the ground in dense, hot turbulent clouds which, on cooling, consolidated into tough, light coloured rocks. By contrast, many of the more localised ash showers have left thick layers of loose material quickly cut up by deep and terraced stream channels, especially in the upper catchments of the Waikato and Rangitaiki.

So warping, faulting, rapid erosion, together with the spasmodic activity that builds volcanic forms anew, all give diversity of surface form to this inland plateau which forms the heart of the North Island, upwards of 2,000 ft above the sea. Above this level, of course, stand the volcanic mountains. The most spectacular of these is Ruapehu; any traveller by the main north road from Taihape to Waiouru can see the landscape change abruptly as the mudstone country of the upper Rangitikei passes beneath the volcanics of its broad base. It dominates the North Island inland.

The volcanic plateau today is of special interest for its recent and spectacular settlement and development. Long thought to be more or less worthless on account of its mineral deficiency and porous pumice soils, it has been the site of large-scale plantings of exotic forests. Moreover, new methods and new fertilisers have made grassland farming possible. All this, together with the harnessing of the Waikato River water and the geothermal steam of Wairakei for generation of electric power, has brought new prosperity to country that only a few decades ago was mostly a scrub-covered wilderness.

To bring some order to a summary account of the diverse landscape forms to be found in New Zealand, the country may be divided into landscape regions. Contrasts in kind of country from area to area are often obvious to the eye. The regional diversity of scene is mainly a function of the structural pattern of the country that, with a brief history of its evolution, has been outlined elsewhere. Very useful, too, is a simplified geological map showing its rocks as belonging only to four main types: the older hard rocks of the understructure (whatever their age or composition); the younger weak rocks laid down over them as a cover (mainly mudstones); volcanic rocks (whatever their kind); and the recent deposits of waste (shingle, sand, or mud) brought down from the wasting uplands to make the bordering plains. From this map, especially, the contrast in kind between North and South Islands is obvious at once; the sharpest contrasts in the North Island, too, are those between hard-rock highland and weak-rock hill country. The lowland plains of recent making are seen at once to be limited in area; indeed, less than a tenth of the country could properly be described as plain.

Division of the North Island into landscape regions is fairly simple; the contrasts in kind between north, east, and west are strongly marked, and recent volcanic activity gives the interior plateau a special character of its own. Division of the South Island, however, is not so easy. The north (i.e., the high country of Nelson and Marlborough) is quite unique because it is made of closely spaced block mountains separated by narrow valley lowlands. A midland zone contains the higher Alpine ranges and the bordering piedmont lowlands of Canterbury and Westland. The broken (schist) plateau of Otago is something unique, too, on account of its pattern of simple fault-bounded block mountains – a typical range and basin region. The Fiordland massif in the far south-west is, perhaps, the most distinctive unit piece of the country. Finally, there is Southland where the change of direction of the mountain axis to the south-east brings a local variety of surface forms.

In this very brief account of landscapes which give some special character to different parts of the country, New Zealand may be divided (more or less arbitrarily) into these regions – North Island: the northern peninsula; the mountain axis and east coast hills; the west; and the interior (volcanic) plateau. South Island: the north; the midland zone; the Otago range and basin country; Fiordland; Southland.