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Updated: May 31, 2025
A short time after I got up to the Rangitata, I had occasion to go down again to Christ Church, and stayed there one day. On my return, with a companion, we were delayed two days at the Rakaia: a very heavy fresh had come down, so as to render the river impassable even in the punt.
During a fresh, the Rakaia is not fordable, at any rate, no one ought to ford it; but the two first-named rivers may be crossed, with great care, in pretty heavy freshes, without the water going higher than the knees of the rider.
For instance, four miles north of the Rakaia there is a terrace some twelve or fourteen feet high; the water in the river is nine feet above the top of this terrace. To the eye of the casual observer there is no perceptible difference between the levels, still the difference exists and has been measured.
Tributary streams are terraced in like manner on a small scale, while even the mountain creeks repeat the phenomena in miniature: the terraces being always highest where the river emerges from its gorge, and slowly dwindling down as it approaches the sea, till finally, instead of the river being many hundred feet below the level of the plains, as is the case at the foot of the mountains, the plains near the sea are considerably below the water in the river, as on the north side of the Rakaia, before described.
On the night of our arrival at the Rakaia I did not yard the bullocks, as they seemed inclined to stay quietly with some others that were about the place; next morning they were gone. Were they up the river, or down the river, across the river, or gone back? You are at Cambridge, and have lost your bullocks.
That was a fair and fertile land stretching out before us, intersected by the deep banks of the Rakaia, with here and there a tiny patch of emerald green and a white dot, representing the house and English grass paddock of a new settler.
After an early dinner, my patron and myself started on our journey, and after travelling for some few hours over rather a rough country, though one which appeared to me to be beautiful indeed, we came upon a vast river- bed, with a little river winding about it. This is the Harpur, a tributary of the Rakaia, and the northern branch of that river.
Hut Cadets Openings for Emigrants without Capital For those who bring Money Drunkenness Introductions The Rakaia Valley leading to the Rangitata Snow-grass and Spaniard Solitude Rain and Flood Cat Irishman Discomforts of Hut Gradual Improvement Value of Cat.
Baker and I went up the last saddle we tried and thought it was a pass to the West Coast, but found it looked down on to the headwaters of the Rakaia: however we saw a true pass opposite, just as I have described in Erewhon, only that there were no clouds and we never went straight down as I said I did, but took two days going round by Lake Heron. And there is no lake at the top of the true pass.
The Rakaia is fifty miles from Christchurch, and that was our first day's ride. The accommodation house on the north side was a weird-looking habitation, a long, low, single-storeyed desolate-looking building, partly constructed of mud and partly of green timber slabs rough from the forest, but it was, even so, a welcome sight after our long monotonous ride.
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