HISTORIC RIVER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 239, 8 October 1932, Page 7

HISTORIC RIVER.

GOLD BY THE TON. ROMANCE OF THE SHOTOVER. PAYMENT FOR FLOUR. , (By J.E.G.) In the "Otage Daily Times" of August 16, 1862,- there appeared this paragraph: "Yesterday' afternoon two men went to the Treasury, Dunedin, and deposited a bag of gold weighing 871b. They declined to say where they had obtained this rich parcel, but stated there was room for plenty more men where they had been working." The names of these two lucky diggers were Hartley and Reilly, two Americans, and the site of their was a mile below the confluence of the Kawarau and Molyneaux Rivers, near where the township of Cromwell is situated.

Desolate Country. In 1800, the population of Otago was about 13,000, and the annual revenue oi the province amounted to £83,000, but by Gabriel Read's discoveries of gold at Tuapeka in 1861 the population at the close of 18G2 liad increased to 30,000, and the annual revenue to £280,000. .The discoveries on the Dunstan, however, showed that goldmining in Otago had scarcely begun, and brave men, in the prime of life, from all parts of the civilised world, with the pick and shovel of the prospector, went forth in search of fortune, amid the desolate solitudes of the almost unknown interior —an interior then pervaded by and enveloped in solemn loneliness. The eye of the weary traveller was palled by the dreariness of the plains, the monotonous uniformity of the mountain ranges, and the drowsy sadness of the valleys, relieved only by great grey rocks, which shared the desolation to which they contributed. All was still, solemn and silent. A dreary waste, devoid of either animal or liiiman life, without roads, without wood, and frequently without' water. Vegetation was limited to stunted clumps of matagowrie, speargrass, and tussocks, through which the bleak winds blew in mournful dissonance. Such was the land of glooui which surrounded those dauntless gold hunters, who faced the perils of cold, hunger, scurvy, frostbite", and even death, in their mad race for wealth. Wood was so scarce that as much as £5 was paid for gin cases with which the wash dirt was cradled, and when the Provincial Government erected the first telegraph line to the Dunstan, tubular iron poles were used, because they could not be'converted by the diggers into firewood. By the close of 1802 upward of. 70,000 ounces of goldliad been sent to Dunedin from the Dunstan by the escort alone, but when in the spring the snow began to melt on the ranges, the Clutha River rose, flooded the beaches, and drove the miners from their claims. The Turbulent Shotover. The excitement occasioned by this news had not abated, when the startling report of further discoveries on the Shotover attracted a rush to that turbulent stream. The fortunate prospector there was one Thomas Arthur, after whom Arthur's Point, near Queenstown, is named. He, with three mates, obtained 200 ounces of gold in eight days, and in less than two months each partner had £4000 in his possession. Then ensued the greatest rush of all. Excitement rose to fever heat. The only route was to Kingston, at the southern extremity of Lake Wakatipu, and thence by a boat owned by Mr. W. G. Rees, a runholder, to Queenstown. Both diggers and their provisions had to be transported in the early days of the rush by this boat, and the congestion may be imagined. It cost £120 to £150 a ton to cart provisions from Dunedin. Sugar and flour were 2/6 a pound, bread 7/ for a four pound loaf, tea 5/ a pound, and Mr. Rees sold carcases of mutton for £3 17/6 each. In a few weeks, however, Mr. Rees' famous whaleboat carried the first escort of gold from the Shotover, amounting to 25,000 ounces, and the total output of Otago for 1862 rose to 332,430 ounces. The Scarcity of Food. Old diggers have told of the rush made for the flour when the news spread of the arrival of the flour boat from Kingston. Many were so hungry that they simply poured boiling water on the flour and consumed it where they stood. Although the enforcement of law was weak, perfect order was observed while the flour was being distributed. Each man received his fair share. A large circle was formed, each having his pannikin in one hand and his pennyweight of gold dust for payment in the other.

The Shotover, below Arthur's Point, is quite a well-mannered stream, flowing sedately though fairly open country, but above Arthur's Point it can scarcely be dignified by the name of river. For almost forty miles it races and roars in one continuous series of cataracts and whirlpools, hemmed in by a narrow but lofty and precipitous gorge, where huge piles of overhanging rock, five to seven hundred feet high, liavo a habit of hurtling down to form further turbid waterfalls. It is underneath this inaccessible forty-mile stretch of seething foam, where the gold is said to lie thickest. ' Big Hauls. The waters of Moke Creek and the Moonlight mingle with those of the Shotover at Arthur's Point, where the river takes a sharp bend to the eastward, and where the Shotover Gorge opens into a valley. It was at the junction of these streams, in comparatively slack water, that the Lew Hoy dredges in the '90's extracted an enormous amount of gold, some estimates placing the value thereon aa high as a quarter of a million sterling and over three tons in weight. At Skippers Gully, some miles further upstream, highly payable deposits were worked, and for many years splendid returns were gained by mining the quartz reefs there.

One of the most sensational finds on the Shotover was made by two Maoris in 1863 on a rocky eminence thirty miles above Arthur's Point where, in the course of one afternoon they secured twentyfive pounds weight of the precious metal. A few weeks later, in the same locality, upward of £3000 worth of gold was taken from a small patch of CO square feet, while another party close by averaged two pounds weight a day from beach workings. At Carmichael's, some distance above Skippers, six and one-half pounds of gold were once obtained from a single dish of wash dirt. Old goldminers who liave worked the Shotover have been singularly unanimous in the opinion that the auriferous resources of that part of Otago are not nearly exhausted, and although the sensational discoveries of the early days are not likely to be repeated, great possibilities lie in the vast gold-bearing quartz reefs in the mountain ranges, northward of the Sources of the golden I Shotover,