MANY CLAIMANTS FOR THE HONOUR

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30900, 5 November 1965, Page 23

MANY CLAIMANTS FOR THE HONOUR

The uneventful return passage was accomplished in 10 cays and on March 2, after six weeks away. Haast and his rnen were back at Mak-rora bush, “all in rags. nearly shoeless, and without any provisions.”

The expedition represented a considerable piece of exploration: the lowest of the transalpine passes had been revealed, had been crossed from the saddle to the sea and was publicised in Haast’s long provisional report ap pearing in the Christchurch newspapers of April. 1863; and although the geologist had washed only a meagre colour in the western watershed, his topographical descriptions, geological specimens, and botanical collections were (in Haast’s own words) “an accession to the welfare of the colony at large.”

Julius Haast, after further exploration in the Makarora valley and Mackenzie country, returned to Christchurch on May 12, 1863: but already another was claiming priority as pioneer pass-finder in the Wanaka region. Charles Cameron—Scot, gold-digger, colonial hard case, redoubtable explorer of the Routeburn and upper Shotover rivers (October-November. 1862) announced per medium of the “Dunstan News.” “Weekly Colonist.” and subsequently the “Lyttelton Times” and “The Press.” Christchurch, that he had crossed Haast’s Pass, “being in advance of Dr. Haast,” and had made the sea coast just south of the “Awarora” (Haast) river.

To investigate thoroughly the Cameron claim would require another special supplement of “The Press” or a chapter at least as long as XXV in H. F. von Haast’s exhaustive and exhausting “Life and Times. . . .”

Cameron’s claim raises three questions which, on the basis of surviving evidence, do not all admit definite answers. Those questions concern first, the general chronology of Cameron’s expedition: second, whether he discovered the pass himself or as a result of Information which,’ “by a judicious system of pumping,” he obtained from Holmes, Haring, and Warner: third, whether he reached the western coast.

As to the first question: in newspaper letters of February and December, 1863, Cameron said that he left Makrora bush on January 8. 1863. found a low saddle leading to the western watershed about January 11, followed a western river, the “Awarora” (Awarua or Haast river) to the sea, which he saw on January 21 and reached a few days later, was back at the head of the Makarora on January 28, and met Holmes, Haring, and Warner in the Makarora valley on January 29. (These three, it will be recalled, had returned from the western watershed on the twenty-ninth for a larger tent and more provisions.) Cameron’s chronology cannot be reconciled with information given to Haast’s party on January 22 at Makrora bush and recorded by Holmes:

The sawyers there told us that Mr Cameron, unaccompanied, except by his horse and dog, had left’the same spot two days previous. . . . The same evening we camped on a grass flat eleven miles above this settlement . . and here we found Mr Cameron s horse, grazing at large, his owner nowhere to be seen.

If the Holmes statement is accepted. Cameron left Makarora bush on January 20, not January 8 and, since he clearly was back in the Makarora valley by January 29. his crossing to the western coast and return was accomplished in nine days. Cameron “must have gone there like the Flying Dutchman” objected Haring later in 1863 Nevertheless, in good conditions a seasoned flying Scotsman could have achieved the double crossing in nine days; one' doubts arise more by association of this claim with Cameron’s own chronology of his expedition, a chronology which permits him 20 days for the double crossing (January 8-January 28) bi t seems, from the Holmes testimony, to be false. Mcreover. Cameron's very specific dates (January 8, January 11, January 21) take on the appearance of a highly elaborate piece of misremembering—or, fabrication.

The second question: did Cameron discover the Haast Pass first and independently, or by virtue of information obtained from Holmes. Haring. and Warner? On January 29. Cameron, said Holmes, told the trio “with the greatest coolness that he had just returned from the West Coast describing his route as lying along the tops of the mountains, rough and perilous in the extreme, and to follow which again he would not take £1000." This is hardly the language of a man who has just found a low saddle. Perhaps Holmes, as an interested party, is misreporting Cameron: perhaps Cameron was simply having a joke or being close-mouthed: but Haast and his men found no trace of Cameron’s tracks nor any of his camp sites after the Fish-Makarora junction (This latter evidence, though suggestive, is not conclusive). On the basis of the surviving records it is simply impossible to state with certainty whether Cameron found Haast Pass before Haast or after him and as a result of information imparted by Holmes. Haring, and Warner: one is free, however, to accept Cameron’s own testimony that he found and crossed the pass “being in advance of Dr. Haast ”

Now the third question whether Cameron reached the western coast? Contemporary opinion was inclined to doubt whether Cameron had pene-

trated the western watershed, or even found the pass. These doubts were ended in 1881 by the surveyor Thomas Noel Brodrick. Brodrick reports: On a peak to the west of Haast's Pasts and considerably above the line of perpetual snow tn a cairn of stones which were frozen together, I found a powder flask with the inscription deeply scratched into on both sides, “Charles Cameron, Jany. 1863.”—1 wrote his name and the date. 1883, and my own and the date, 1881, on a stone and left them there, but I brought away the tin for a curiosity. Cameron was the first man who explored this country, and I suppose no-one had been up this hill since. I shall call it Mt. Cameron

This discovery confirms Charles Cameron's own statement of 1863 that “at the head of the western branch of the Makarora I built cairns and left my name and date.” It also indicates that Cameron had probably discovered the pass since (in Brodrick’s words) “whoever put it [the powder flask] there could not have failed to see the Pass as

he could not have ascended from any other direction.” (H. F. von Haast will scarcely admit this even to Cameron, believing that he might have ascended Mount Cameron “without noticing the pass.”) The powder flask does not, of course, prove that Cameron preceded Haast over the pass: it may have been placed on Mount Cameron subsequent to the Cameron-Holmes, Haring, Warner parley on January 29. Nor can the powder flask tell us anything of the westward extent of Cameron’s exi plorations. Against his own claim that he followed the “Awaroa” (Awarua or Haast river) to the sea, we must here set both his vague and airy account of the Haast valley and especially his fanciful description of the level country at the mouth of the Haast river: “The mountains are high near the coast and run into the sea.”

So we arrive at a somewhat inconclusive conclusion: our venturesome but devious Scot found Haast Pass either a few davs before or a few days after Haast’s party; he climbed Mount Cameron, and may have followed the Haast river some distance westwards, but not to the western coast.

Subsequent opinion has tended to support the Scot, the private adventurer, the common colonial, at the expense of the German, the govern-ment-sponsored explorer, the eminent but not always lovable natural scientist. Thus another venturesome Scot, Charles Edward Douglas, wrote:

There has been considerable argument as to who was the first white man who came over tne pass. From all I can understand a man named Cameron came through from the Wanaka and reached the Landsbro flats and on going back he met Dr. Haast either at the Wanaka or »n Queenstown ready to start over with his party, and no doubt the Doctor got information from Cameron, but as is usual with explorers he makes no mention of him in his book.

Cameron, like almost all prospectors, left no record of his

journey except traditions of public house blowing .... There I would give a little advice to Scientific explorers, especially to the German brand of the species, and that is make some slight acknowledgement that you do get information from the inhabitants who live about the country

As Douglas’s biographer, J. D. Pascoe, fairly observes: “Douglas felt more irritation than respect for Haast.” Douglas’s view of the affair was reiterated by George M. Hassing, who oddly enough ferried Cameron across the upper Clutha at Albert Town early in January, 1863:

In about three weeks’ time Mr Cameron returned, and informed me that he had crossed the saddle and ascended a mountain west of it where he had built a cairn, and had a good view of the upper part of the river flowing towards the West Coast. He was quite satisfied he had discovered an easy practicable route to the West Coast, and as he was not well provided with food, he returned by the way he came. . . . Nor did he even get credit for the discovery which was subsequently claimed and awarded to Dr. J. Haast. . . Hassing’s statement, which

does not resolve the question of priority, is interesting in that Cameron at this stage was apparently not claiming to have descended the Haast valley, much less to have reached the western coast. Other Claimants The partial resolution of the Cameron-Haast controversy in favour of Haast by no means takes us out of the scrub. If the discovery of this route be reduced to its lowest common denominator—who was the first European to reach the Makarora-Awarua saddle? —then both Haast and Cameron may have to yield pride of place to another.

In 1932, the recollections of John Holland Baker, edited by his daughter, were published under the title “A Surveyor in New Zealand.” ‘Recollections” and “reminiscences” are the bane of the colonial historian—useful for impressions, notoriously un-

reliable for dates and events —and he who accepts them as a dietary staple is liable to be branded a dirty feeder. ■ Baker’s recollections, however, are saved from glaring jinaccuracy because they are based on his colonial diary, kept at the time. As a lad of 16, John Baker arrived in Canterbury in 1857, was for three years a survey cadet, and spent his holidays exploring. Early in 1861, he accompanied Samuel Butler on the Rakaia expedition which led to the discovery of “Whitcombe’s” Pass. In March, 1861, with E. Owen, Baker set out to explore the branches of the Waitaki river in the hope of finding unselected sheep country. The two men then crossed Lindis Pass and reached the southern extremity of Lake Wanaka. Baker recalled:

We heard some time before that there Was a low pass over to the West Coast at the head of Lake Wanaka and we thought this might lead into open grass country. . . . Having reached the head of the lake we secured the boat, packed the blankets on our backs, tramped up the Wanaka [Makarora] river and arrived at the top of the pass, afterwards called the Haast Pass. ... I climbed a high tree on the saddle and obtained a good view of the country beyond, but seeing that it was all bush country we knew our quest was fruitless and made our way back to the lake and our boat.

In this matter-of-faet fashion, Baker calmly recounts the discovery of the Haast Pass in April, 1861, some 20 months before Haast and his men, and Cameron and his dog, arrived on the scene. One may well ask why Baker failed to make his discovery known at the time, and why he did not end the Cameron-Haast row of 1863 with a straight: “I beat you both.” Baker’s daughter explains that her father .“thought so little of his early explorations that he rarely mentioned them.” Moreover, Baker discovered the pass while searching for sheep country; for this purpose the western watershed was clearly useless, and so he promptly dismissed the exploration. Samuel Butler’s discovery of Whitcombe’s Pass was similarly forgotten for Butler, like Baker, wanted “country,” not a pass leading to “nowhere.” If it then be objected that Baker’s un-

mpported testimony of his discovery is accepted whereas Cameron's is considered suspect, the answer must be that Cameron is demonstrably unreliable on certan points, whereas there is no reason to doubt Baker’s veracity. Yet one cannot eScape misgivings concerning Baker’s claim. It seems odd that •Baker never informed his great friend T. N. Brodrick (the powder flask man) of the 1861 discovery; it is clear from Brodrick’s own statement (“Cameron was the first man who explored the country”) that Baker did not. We can only assume that John Baker was much less intent than Charles Cameron on establishing his reputation as an intrepid explorer: and we must still acknowledge Sir Julius von Haast as the explorer who not merely discovered the old Maori route but made its existence known to contemporaries. Gold At The Haast South Westland was the scene of some big beach rushes in 1865-6, but the closest to the Haast was Albert Hunt’s celebrated duffer near Bruce Bay. By the end of 1866. the southern beaches were slipping back into their old solitude: the banks closed their agencies, population fell below the 700 mark, and only a multitude of holes in the sand remained as reminders of great days at Five Mile and Three Mile, Gillespie’s and Okarito. Early in 1867, however, the deep south was granted one final flutter before the curtain was rung down.

In January, 1867, the Okarito Warden, Matthew Price, noticed a few parties moving quietly out of town. Their destination was the Haast river, some 80 miles away. Small schooners had already entered the Haast, and in January the paddle steamer Bruce crossed the bar, mooring against the south bank in two fathoms of water. This was the signal for a major rush in February, 1867, the last big sea-borne movement from Hokitika. An assortment of vessels ranging from the dirty little Bruce to the 688ton Claud Hamilton raced up and down the coast unloading complements of sea-sick miners at the Haast.

The new diggings lay in low terraces on either side of the Haast river, the first about two miles to the north, the second some four miles to the south, where Duffy and Warren were the prospectors. Both fields were essentially beachworkings, and together were hard put to maintain the 1500 excited men who arrived. A town site was surveyed on the south bank of the Haast river, and furious struggles ensued between the dozen claimants for each alotment. The surveyor, Gerhard Mueller, laid out a second township on the north bank of the Okuru river, which was also navigable, and the Otago government, delighted with a gold rush so near its western boundary,

began to cut a track over Haast Pass.

Such energy deserved a better reward: the beach deposits of the Haast were quickly exhausted. In May, 1867, Haast town contained only two stores and two hotels though its 11 male and three female residents also supported a cobbler and two doctors! Efforts to find an inland goldfield up the valley of the Haast were unavailing Haast town collapsed: the sea and the shifting sand destroyed the works of its vanishing pioneers, and only the gulls cried their requiem The collapse of the Haast gold rush fairly marks a stage in the early history of the Haast region—a history which began with the search for gold, issued in the discovery qf a pass, and ended with a modest but lively gold rush In spite of the advantages that the com pletion of the Haast route will bring for the men and women who have made South Westland their home, a certain sadness attaches to the opening of New Zealand’s last frontier, and a sense of violation. The peace of those remote valleys will soon be shattered by high-revving motor engines, cigarette packets, cordial bottles, and a tiresome succession of motels will mark the progress of civilisation southwards: and in certain favoured spots, the steady click of cameras will register the tourists’ vain attempts to reduce nature to a 5x3 jumbo print. One must, 1 suppose, applaud the revelation of the scenic beauties which the new route brings —but Charley Douglas would not have approved:

.. . the Southern parts o< Westland were overhauled by bands of men who in the hunt after Gold feared neither death nor the Devil. They didn't in those days sit down and whine to Government for Tracks, thev didn't wait for Subsidized Ferrys or Charity Steamers, but they boldly penetrated Forest and Mountain, crossed rivers and scrambled round Bluffs, reckless of tomorrow, so long as today furnished them with a roast Maorie Hen or a Billy of Mussells and a pannican of Skilly.