THE ERODING SEA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 97, 17 April 1914, Page 4

THE ERODING SEA.

The "Lyttelton Times" remarks that the serious erosion of the town seafront which has caused such alarm in Hokitika, is no new thing on the West Coast. The conjunction of westerly gales and high spring tides which last week sent the immense seas thundering into Hokitika's doors and washing away great slices of the sandy shore and many waterside buildings-, has occurred many times within recent years, but the advance on each occasion has been so gradual and insidious that the residents scarcely realised their townfront in course of time would be under the waters of the Tasman Sea. The "Times" goes on to say: Protective works have been proposed, but on the unsheltered West Coast such attempts to baulk the ocean in its stride are likely to avail very little against the rollers which come in on the beach before a strong westerly with an uninterrupted sweep of a thousand miles There is at any rate an opportunity now for the display of some pretty engineering skill on the sea-bitten face of the historic old digging town. Such hard and raggy projeetioi-'s as the volcanic Cape of Egmont and the granite cliffs of the Sounds region oppose an invincible barrier to the seas along the West Coast of New Zealand, but the great incurves between these two points are in part at least the work of the eroding sea. On the West Coast of the Auckland province the ocean has taken possession of great areas of low-lying dry land within a comparatively short period. There are circumstantial native traditions describing the gradual disappearance of a land known as Paorae, which once existed outside Manukau Heads, extending from that place southwards to Waikato Heads. This great extent of flat country was inhabited by the Natives, who grew kumeras to perfection in its warm sandy soil, and caught wildfowl in huge quantities in its numerous fresh-water lagoons. Paorae gradually disappeared, "eaten away by sea," as the Maoris describe the process. The last vestiges of this land of kumera plantations were visible about a century ago. It was on its northern edge, the Manukau bar, that H.M.S. Orpheus struck in 1863. Further north again, at Kaipara Heads, there was another ancient land, covered with villages and cultivations. This low sandy tract, known in tradition as Taporapora, is now reduced to a, series of dangerous shoals.