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.
These old river channels, or at any rate channels where portions of the
rivers have at one time come down, are everywhere about the plains, but
the nearer you get to a river the more you see of them; on either side
the Rakaia, after it has got clear of the gorge, you find channel after
channel, now completely grassed over for some miles, betraying the
action of river water as plainly as possible. The rivers after leaving
their several gorges lie, as it were, on the highest part of a huge
fanlike delta, which radiates from the gorge down to the sea; the plains
are almost entirely, for many miles on either side the rivers, composed
of nothing but stones, all betraying the action of water. These stones
are so closely packed, that at times one wonders how the tussocks and
fine, sweet undergrowth can force their way up through them, and even
where the ground is free from stones at the surface I am sure that at a
little distance below stones would be found packed in the same way.
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