CHAPTER XX: Nelson.
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CHAPTER XX.
Nelson.
Character of the surface of the province. -- The Western mountain ranges. -- The Eastern ranges. -- The hills on Blind Bay. -- Excellent climate on the shores of Blind Bay. -- The town of Nelson, situation, foundation and development. -- The Harbour. -- The Boulder Bank. -- The agricultural districts. -- Ranzau and Sarau, German settlements. -- Wood-cutters and shepherds the farthest out-posts of civilization. -- The Mineral wealth of Nelson. -- The copper and chrome-ore of the Wooded Peak and Dun Mountain.
The character of the surface is always more or less indicative of the geological structure of a country. Even to those who have not deeply studied the science the different forms, which mountain-ranges show, will indicate the difference of their geological structure. This difference in the external appearance of the country is most striking and surprising to the traveller on coming from the Province of Auckland on the North Island to the Province of Nelson on the South Island. In contrast with the comparatively low ranges of hills and table-lands, extending over the greater part of the northern Island, and broken only by high volcanic peaks, we find in Nelson high and steep mountain ranges with serrated peaks, striking in long parallel chains, separated by deep, longitudinal valleys, and broken at right angles by rocky gorges. The geological field presented here is consequently an entirely new one in comparison with that of the North Island.
From a central point forming the water-shed between the East and West coasts, and containing the sources of the boundary-rivers of the two provinces, Nelson and Canterbury, -- the Hurunui
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running Eastward, and the Teramakau running Westward, -- the Southern Alps send forth towards North two branches through the province of Nelson, the extremities of which are washed by the waters of Cook's Strait.
These branches present very different geological features. The Western Ranges, terminating in Separation-Point and near Cape Farewell, have an almost northerly strike. They consist of crystalline rocks and metamorphic schists, principally granite, gneiss, mica-schist and hornblende-schist, quartzite and clay-slate. To the auriferous character of those rocks, Nelson is indebted for its goldfields. 1 The peaks of these ranges ascending to a height of 5000 to G000 feet above the level of the sea, and in winter-time covered with snow to a great extent, such as the picturesque Mt. Arthur, Mt. Owen and others, greet the traveller from afar on his arrival in Blind-Bay, and impart to the landscape about Nelson one of its most peculiar charms. The plains watered by considerable rivers, which interrupt the ranges, offer to the colonist extensive areas for agriculture, and to sheep-farmers very fine natural pasture grounds. Mr. T. Brunner was the first to traverse these regions under unspeakable difficulties; J. Haast, in his able report on the Western district of the province Nelson 2 was the first to publish a detailed account of them, giving names to ranges, mountains, lakes, and rivers not named before. My own name I had also the pleasure of finding in the report and on the accompanying topographical map attached to a mountain, a river and a lake near the sources of Grey river. For this token of friendly remembrance I am the more indebted to my worthy friend, as I have been honoured with a place in the most select and respected society, by the side of the mountains Werner, Herschel, Hooker, Albert and Victoria. A view of the mountain-range bordering the Grey-plains in the East, I have presented in the following chapter. The principal groups belonging to the Western Ranges, are to the North of the Buller river the Lyell and Marino
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ranges and Mt. Owen, then the Tasman mountains and the Mt. Arthur ranges; finally in the North, bordering on Golden Bay, the Whakamarama, Haupiri and Anatoki ranges. South of the Buller is situated the isolated mountain-stock of the Paparoha range with the Buckland mountains, and the Victoria, Brunner and Mantell ranges. In the Victoria range the mountains attain a height of 7500 feet above the level of the sea. The most important plains and valleys are the Grey and Mawhera plains, the Buller or Kawatiri plains with their southern branches, the Matakitaki, Maruia and Inangahua plains; farthermore the Mokinui and Karamea (or Mackay) plains, the Wakapuia valley; finally on Golden Bay the broad valleys of the Aorere and Takaka rivers. The area of the Grey plains alone is estimated at about 250,000 acres; and we may take it for granted, that the Province of Nelson possesses all together in these Western mountain-ranges about half a million acres of available land.
The Eastern Ranges, stretching from Southwest to Northeast, consist of stratified sedimentary rocks of sandstones, red, green and gray clay-slates, with few limestone banks intervening. The strata are highly inclined, all more or less vertical, and the parallelism of their strike from Northeast to Southwest continues with remarkable regularity. They are accompanied by an immense dyke of intrusive rocks, striking in the same direction from the northern extremity of d'Urville's Island across the French Pass, through the Croixelles by the Dun Mountain, Upper Wairoa and traceable as far as the Cannibals Gorge in the South of the province, a distance of 150 miles; thus constituting one of the most prominent geological features of the country. The nature of the rocks is very varying; in the longitudinal extent of the dyke, the intrusive masses presenting themselves now as serpentine and olivin-rock (Dunit), now as syenite or diabase; at other points as diallage-rock and pyroxene-porphyry. To the serpentine and olivin range in the South of the city of Nelson belongs the famous Dun Mountain, the copper-ore and chromate of iron of which has for several years past given rise to mining enterprises.
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On Cook's Strait those ranges terminate in numerous islands and peninsulas enclosing those fiord-like inlets and sounds (Pelorus Sound; Queen Charlotte Sound etc.), which already in Cook's time were noted as most excellent harbours. Towards South the mountains grow higher and higher. Ben Nevis and Gordon's-knob, visible from the heights about Nelson, rise already to a height of 4000 feet above the level of the sea; but then the mountain-range is interrupted by a pass leading from the Motueka valley along the Big Bush Road to the Wairau valley. On the southern shores of Lake Rotoiti the mountains rise again forming Mounts Travers and Mackey, and further in a southwesterly direction ascending in the Spencer mountains (Mt. Franklin and Mt. Humboldt) to a height of 10,000 feet, far beyond the limits of perpetual snow. These ranges are covered, to an altitude of 4000 to 4500 feet with dense forest, above which an Alpine vegetation begins; the summits form meadows of short smooth snow-grass, the whole reminding one strongly of the Alpine scenery of Switzerland. The group of the Spencer mountains forms the central knot, from which nearly all the principal rivers of the province of Nelson rise, the Wairau, Waiautoa (Clarence) and the Waiauua (Dillon) running towards the East coast; and the tributaries of the Kawatiri (Buller river) and Mawhera (Grey river), which empty into the sea on the West coast. It is very remarkable, that the most elevated heights of the province consist of sedimentary rocks, the strata of which have been upturned nearly vertically. The sandstones and slates, however, being destitute of fossils, it has as yet been impossible to ascertain their exact geological age. From other reasons we may infer that in those mountains we have to do with strata corresponding partly with Silurian and Devonian, partly with Triassic formations in Europe. 3 The eastern-most portions of this mountain-system, beginning at Pelorus-Sound -- including the Wairau plains and the broad longitudinal valleys of the Wairau, Awatere and Waiautoa (or Clarence) river, and likewise comprising the seaward and landward Kaikoras, with the towering peaks bearing the names of Scandinavian deities, such as
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Odin, 9700 feet high (the Maori name is Tapuenuka), Thor (8700 feet) and Freya (8500 feet) -- have been separated from the province of Nelson since 1859 as the new province of Marlborough. 4
Between the Eastern and Western Ranges is the deep indentation of the coast which forms Blind Bay, and from the southern extremity of which the land rises gradually towards South to a height of 2000 feet above the level of the sea, forming an undulating hilly country, which extends along the lakes Rotoiti and Rotorua, past Mt. Murchison to the point, where Southeast of the Spencer
mountains the Eastern and Western Ranges, converging in the line of their strike, meet together. The hills near Nelson bear the name of the Moutere hills. They are intersected by numerous rivers running in deeply channelled, terraced valleys. The Motueka and Waimea rivers empty into Blind Bay, while the Buller river takes a transverse direction from the Eastern to the Western Ranges
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and towards the West coast. The hills are composed of irregular and imperfectly stratified beds of shingle, gravel, sand and clay, resting upon tertiary strata. These beds are of quaternary age, and being part of the generally diffused drift formation, which fills up all the principal valleys and covers all the flats amongst the mountains, afford evidence of the great action of water and ice upon the surface within a comparatively very recent period. The large dam composed of colossal rugged blocks of rock, which borders the lower end of lake Rotoiti, may be looked upon as the moraine of a former glacier.
It is, no doubt, in consequence of the peculiar configuration of the country just described that the shores of Blind Bay are favored with the excellent climate, for which they are famous. However heavy the gale in Cook's straits may be, Blind Bay is always calm. From the swell of the sea the Bay is protected by the land projecting to a great distance near Separation Point and d'Urville's Island; while the mountain-ranges converging towards the South form a regular wedge warding off the violent atmospheric currents from the South. Ships, therefore, find always shelter in Blind Bay from the dreaded gales that rage in Cook's Straits; and the town of Nelson, situated on the Southeast shore of the Bay at the immediate foot of the Eastern ranges, unlike other cities on the coast of New Zealand, which are rather too much subject to wind, enjoys a soothing calm, which combined with a clear and rarely clouded sky renders its climate the pleasantest in New Zealand. Nelson, therefore, has been justly styled "the garden of New-Zealand."
The town of Nelson was founded but few years after Wellington, and was the second settlement formed by the New Zealand Company in Cook's Straits. In February 1842, the first vessel arrived with a number of immigrants, and the 25th May of the same year is marked in the annals of the city as the ever memorable day, when the first plough penetrated the virgin soil of the new colony. Notwithstanding sore and heavy trials, which the infant-colony had to undergo -- already in 1843, in a fatal encoun-
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ter with the natives, who under the command of Rauparaha and Rangihaiata opposed the colonization in the Wairau, they lost a number of their best men -- it has steadily gained ground; and when upon a closer exploration of the country, coal, copper-ore, chrome-ore, plumbago and gold were discovered, the fame of Nelson was at once established as being the principal mineral-country of New Zealand. In 1862 the province numbered about 10,000 inhabitants, 5000 of whom reside in the town and its vicinity. The town lies close by the foot of the mountains, being built upon a kind of alluvial delta, which is formed by the confluence of two small streams, named the Maitai and Brookstreet creek, extending also up their valleys, and along the ranges of hills lining the harbour. On account of its beautiful site and its delightful climate, Nelson is justly considered one of the most pleasant places of sojourn in Now Zealand. The impression made by the snug little cottages, surrounded by beautiful gardens, is an extremely cheerful one. As the rows of houses in the principal streets are already closing up more and more, and larger buildings are growing up, the place gradually improves in city-like appearance. On the 26th August 1859 the laying of the corner-stones to new Government buildings took place with all due solemnity, and on that occasion I was honored by the inhabitants with the office of laying the corner-stone to an edifice designed for the noble purposes of art and science, to the Nelson Institute. Certainly a most cheering and memorable epoch in the history of the development of the young colony, when the enterprising pioneers, -- after the toils and labours of their first settling down had succeeded, after their houses had been roofed over, and fields and meadows put in due order, -- now direct their attention also to the nobler purposes of life, to the nursing of the blossoms and fruits of our civilization, of art and science! The Protestant Church is situated upon a commanding elevation in the centre of the town. There are two bridges across the Matai river, a suspension-bridge and a wooden-bridge; and Nelson can even boast of a rail-road, the first constructed upon New Zealand soil. It is the work of the Dun Mountain company,
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constructed for the purpose of developing the mines of chrome-ore on the Dun Mountain, and leads from the harbour through the town along the Brookstreet valley.
The harbour of Nelson is safe, but small and difficult of access to larger sailing-vessels. It owes its formation to a most singular "boulder-bank" which extends eights miles along the coast, forming a natural dam, behind which there is a narrow and shallow arm of the sea, which grows deeper at its southern extremity, where it communicates with Blind Bay, and here forms the harbour. The
entrance to the harbour is between the southern extremity of the boulder-bank and the mainland, but is narrowed so much by the Arrow rock, 5 a rock rising in the middle of it, that the navigable channel is only 50 yards wide. Owing to the extremely swift current of the tide in this narrow channel and its shallowness, larger vessel can pass in and out only in time of high-water, and are moreover obliged to improve the tide in coming or going. These unfavorable circumstances would greatly disparage navigation, but for the excellent anchoring places outside the harbour, which by
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the sheltered situation of Blind Bay are safe in almost any kind of weather. During northwesterly gales the neighbouring Croixelles Harbour offers a perfectly safe place of refuge. The boulder-bank is one of the natural curiosities of Nelson. It consists of rounded pebbles on boulders. In time of high-water a large portion of it is under water; at low-water it is dry throughout its whole length. The largest and heaviest boulders are towards the sea side; on the harbour side the boulders grow smaller; and at a point close by the entrance to the harbour they are so small, that vessels there can drive on the strand without any damage, thus using the place as a natural dry-dock in consequence of the great difference of the water level between ebb and flow. 6 The boulders consist nearly all of one and the same kind of a syenite, containing blackish-green hornblende, flesh-coloured feldspar and a small quantity of iron-pyrites. On following the narrow bank from South to North, it is easily observed, that the boulders towards North grow larger and more angular, and originate from a precipitous bluff of syenite, called Mackay's knob which abuts upon the sea a little beyond Drumduan, the residence of Mr. Mackay. The fragments constantly falling from the cliff's are gradually rolled towards South by the heavy northerly swell combined with a strong current of the sea, passing in time of springtide with considerable velocity along the coast. 7 The reason of their
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being deposited on the existing line is, that in all probability a submarine reef underlies them, of which the Arrow Rock, in the entrance of the harbour may be regarded as the southern termination. The boulder-bank in front of Nelson is a rich field for the zoologist. At neap-tide the sea-side teems with all sorts of fishes, sea-pads, sea-urchins, muscles and snails, while upon the bank itself beautiful spongias are found, which are cast out by the surf. An excellent road leads from Nelson in a S.E. direction, through the agricultural districts of the Waimea and Waiiti plains covered with the most luxuriant meadows and fields. Upon the most fertile alluvial soil there is here farm joining farm, and smaller and larger boroughs are springing up. There is a Richmond with a "Star and Garter Hotel," the proprietor of which is striving to establish the well-earned reputation of that title, so renowned on the banks of the Thames, also among the Antipodes; furthermore Stoke, Hope, Spring-Grove, Wakefield, and what more names there are of villages and boroughs. We also find two German villages: Ranzau, not far from Richmond, and Sarau situated farther East on the Moutere hills. As far as I know, these two are the only German settlements upon New Zealand. At Sarau I was hailed by a merry crowd of flaxen-haired, blue-eyed children; the old folks on the other hand, plain, simple peasants from Mecklenbourg and Hannover, had a great deal to relate about the rascality of the agents, that had decoyed them thither; of the sad disappointments, the bitter want and privations suffered in the first years, until later they had wrought out a tolerable existence by the sweat of their brows. Farther West, at the foot of the Western ranges are the fertile plains of Riwaka and Motueka, which, but fifteen years ago a perfect wilderness, now present the most charming sight: luxuriant meadows with magnificent cattle grazing upon them; thriving fields and orchards, interspersed with the dwellings of the settlers. The white glistening snow-peaks in the back-ground remind us of the most charming valleys of our Alps. In order to conceive a correct idea of the amount of labour required to transform those plains into smiling fields and meadows, let the traveller proceed up
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the valleys. A single day's journey in that direction will suffice to advance from the cultivated parts on the shores of Blind Bay in a southerly direction into those districts, where wood-cutters and shepherds form the farthest outposts of civilization, and a wilderness commences, the virgin-soil of which man has scarcely ever set foot upon, -- a wilderness of bush, swamp, and rock. Each wood-cutter's or shepherd's hut, however scanty, which offers a hospitable shelter to the way-worn traveller, is valued as highly at these borders of au uninhabited wilderness as the Oases in the desert or a solitary island in the ocean. With peculiar feelings one leaves the last inhabited hut, for the purpose of exploring unknown regions, thence taking a direction, where there is no path to lead one on; and whereever the eye roves into the distance over hill and dale, no vestige of human beings is seen. With difficulty one works a way through woods and thicket, and follows the river-banks across uniform grass-plains; with great trouble, and even with danger one crosses rapid mountain-streams, climbs over rocks and mountains, and in short, has all sorts of obstacles to encounter. No one can tell to where one will come, and with joyful surprise one views from open heights the novel landscape. Mountains, valleys and rivers are as yet without names; they are named according to the accidental notion or taste of the explorer, according to recollections from the dear old home, or after distant friends and acquaintances; he fancies himself living in future periods, when all those plains and valleys will be inhabited even to the remotest snow-mountain, the hoary peaks of which are looming up on the horizon; when commodious roads and lanes will enable the traveller to reach in one day the same point, to arrive at which weeks of toilsome and dangerous journey aro required at present. Having already given a detailed account of the coal-beds and gold-fields of the Province in former chapters, I shall here limit my remarks respecting the mineral treasures of the province to the copper and chrome-ore mines on the Dun Mountain, a few miles Southeast of the town. On approaching the harbour of Nelson from the high sea, a bare mountain ridge is seen rising to a height of about
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4000 feet which owes its name "Dun Mountain" to the rusty-brown (dun) colour of its surface. It consists of a very peculiar kind of rock, of a yellowish-green colour when recently broken, but turning rusty-brown on the surface when decomposing. The mass of the rock is olivine, containing fine black grains of chromate of iron interspersed; it is distinguished from serpentine for which it was formerly taken, especially by its greater hardness, and its crystalline structure. I have called it Dunite. 8 The copper-mines, however, which are worked by an English Company (the Dun-Mountain Copper-Mining Company, residing in London), do not lie on
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the Dun Mountain proper, but on the opposite declivity of a mountain-ridge, the highest point of which is named Wooded Peak. In 1856, sixteen tons of excellent copper-ores, principally red oxide of copper and native copper were shipped to England, only as a kind of sample as it were, but the enterprises of the company established in consequence of it were not crowned with the eagerly expected success; and at the time of my stay at Nelson the Dun Mountain was the subject of a hot controversy, as the enthusiastic anticipations and promises of an old Cornish miner, whoso vivid imagination beheld in every superficial trace of ore the richest lodes, were in direct contradiction with the unsatisfactory results, obtained by the technical leader of the enterprise. I regret much to say that the results of my examinations were not such as to corroborate sanguine hopes. The escarpments of Wooded Peak consist of serpentine traversed by dykes of diallage-rock. The mass of the larger dykes is coarse-grained, and very fine specimens of diallage may be knocked off. In this serpentine mountain, over a line of about two miles running from South almost due North, traces of copper-ores are here and there met with in the shape of green and blue silicates of copper (rarely malachite), forming thin crusts upon the crumbling serpentine. Nearly in every instance, where such indications appeared upon the surface, farther researches at a greater depth produced smaller and larger nests of red oxide of copper, and of native copper; sometimes also bunches of copper-pyrites, of purple-copper and of copper-galena, which, however, soon disappeared again. I could not convince myself of the existence of a number of parallel lodes, so as to justify the various names which have been given, and which appear to designate different lodes such as Sullivan's lode, Main lode, Windtrap-Gully lode, Duppa-lode etc. The copper ore does not occur in a regular lode; by which I mean a metalliferous dyke of different mineral composition from that of the rock of the mountain. As is usual in serpentine, the copper ore occurs only in nests and bunches. The richer deposits of ore form lenticular-shaped masses, which, when followed, may increase to a certain distanec, but then disappear
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again in a thin wedge. Where these nests are large and rich, one alone may sometimes make the fortune of a mine. The richest found on the Dun Mountain appears to have been that of the Windtrap Gully, from which pieces of native copper, some of them weighing as much as eight pounds, were extracted. The green and blue silicates of copper are surface minerals, which are only of value by showing the direction of the fissure in which the real ore may be looked for at a greater depth; at a certain distance below the surface they disappear entirely, and it is only by the broken and softened character of the serpentine that the miner is enabled to follow the fissure from one deposit of metal to the other. The occurrence of the best indications of copper ore on the surface over a continuous line of about two miles, affords good ground for supposing that considerable quantities of ore are contained in the mountain; but, on the other land, owing to the manner in which the ores occur in isolated bunches, mining operations in such a region are always attended by less certain profits than where the metal is deposited in a regular lode.
The Dun Mountain Company, therefore, has within the last years devoted all their attention and energy to the systematic and successful working of the chromate of iron which occurs in the same serpentine mountain in large quantity. Whole groups of rocks on the sides of the Wooded Peak consist of almost pure chrome-ore; and there is no doubt, that the lodes of this ore continue with more regularity than the copper-ores. 9 In order to facilitate the hitherto so very difficult and expensive transportation from the heights of the mountain to the harbour of Nelson, the company has constructed a railroad, which runs from the harbour through
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the Brookstreet valley and in numerous curvatures to the height of the mountain.
In the northern continuation of that extensive serpentine mass which is met with on the Dun Mountain, traces of copper-ores have also been found on the Croixelles Harbour, on Current Basin and upon d'Urville's Island. But on those points, also, the experiments made have as vet been without any striking; success. Nelson, however, may well be satisfied. Its beautiful agricultural and pasture-land, its coal-mines, and its gold-fields, are rich sources of wealth and prosperity, and the discoveries of future years 10 may perhaps even realize in their full extent the past and present anticipations of great quantities of copper and other ores existing in that province.
