MILFORD SOUND.

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 117, 29 January 1879, Page 3

MILFORD SOUND.

—0 The following extracts descriptive of this famed scene, the one written from an ordinary and the other from a scientific point of view must be very interesting to lovers of nature. A writer a few years bai-k remarked “Milford is the northernmost of the remarkable West Coast inlets, and is admitted by general consent to be by far the most magnificent. The approach to it is a grand and at the same time perplexing sight. Its mountains are grouped together, tall, spiral-shaped peaks, shooting up into mid-air like a forest of rockets, and not as they appear further south—a bold ridge or cubic mass. Towards the sea the peaks throw off a variety of sloping spurs, dovetailing into each other, so that the entrance to the Sound is completely hid behind a number of tortuous twists and intricate windings. Approaching it in a vessel, it looks the very semblance of a step towards sure destruction. No sooner, however, has one headland been rounded than an open reach is displayed, winch in its turn leads on to further disclosures of a similar kind. A short distance inside the channel becomes tolerably open, and toward the head it expands into a lake-like sheet of water. Our previous Governor describes this Sound, in a despatch Home, as an arm of the great Southern Ocean, cleaving its way through the massive sea wall of steep and rugged cliffs, reaching into the wild solitudes of the lofty mountains which form the cordillera, or dividing range of the Middle Island. Dr. Hector has described the geological formation of the Sound, and his description, while intelligible to all, is impressive. “ The sea.” he says, “ now occupies a chasm that was in past ages ploughed by an immense glacier, and it is through the natural progress of events by which the mountain mass lias been reduced in altitude that the ice stream has been replaced by the waters of i the oceap. The evidence of this chasm

may be seen at a glance. Tim lateral valleys join the main one at various elevations, but they are sharply cut off hy the precipitous wall of the Sound, the erosion of which was continued by a great central glacier long after the subordinary and tributary glaciers had ceased to exist. The precipices exhibit the marks of ice action with great distinctness, and descend quite abruptly to a depth of 800 or 1200 ft, below the water level. Towards the head, the Sound becomes more expanded, and receives large valleys that preserve the same character, but radiate in different directions into the highest range. At .the time that these valleys were filled with glaciers, a great ice lake must have existed in the upper and expanded portions of the Sound, from which the only outlet would be through the chasm which form its lower parts. 5 ’