The result of this absence of precipice is,that there are no waterfalls in the front ranges and few in the back,and these few very insignificant as regards the volume of the water.In Switzerland one has the falls of the Rhine,of the Aar,the Giesbach,the Staubbach,and cataracts great and small innumerable;here there is nothing of the kind,quite as many large rivers,but few waterfalls,to make up for which the rivers run with an almost incredible fall.Mount Peel is twenty-five miles from the sea,and the river-bed of the Rangitata underneath that mountain is 800feet above the sea line,the river running in a straight course though winding about in its wasteful river-bed.To all appearance it is running through a level plain.Of the remarkable gorges through which each river finds its way out of the mountains into the plains I must speak when I take my dray through the gorge of the Ashburton,though this is the least remarkable of them all;in the meantime I must return to the dray on its way to Main's,although I see another digression awaiting me as soon as I have got it two miles ahead of its present position.
It is tedious work keeping constant company with the bullocks;they travel so slowly.Let us linger behind and sun ourselves upon a tussock or a flax bush,and let them travel on until we catch them up again.
They are now going down into an old river-bed formerly tenanted by the Waimakiriri,which then flowed into Lake Ellesmere,ten or a dozen miles south of Christ Church,and which now enters the sea at Kaiapoi,twelve miles north of it;besides this old channel,it has others which it has discarded with fickle caprice for the one in which it happens to be flowing at present,and which there appears some reason for thinking it is soon going to tire of.If it eats about a hundred yards more of its gravelly bank in one place,the river will find an old bed several feet lower than its present;this bed will conduct it into Christ Church.
Government had put up a wooden defence,at a cost of something like 2000pounds,but there was no getting any firm starting-ground,and a few freshes carried embankment,piles,and all away,and ate a large slice off the bank into the bargain;there is nothing for it but to let the river have its own way.Every fresh changes every ford,and to a certain extent alters every channel;after any fresh the river may shift its course directly on to the opposite side of its bed,and leave Christ Church in undisturbed security for centuries;or,again,any fresh may render such a shift in the highest degree improbable,and sooner or later seal the fate of our metropolis.At present no one troubles his head much about it,although a few years ago there was a regular panic upon the subject.