WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 121, 20 February 1928, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Germany is now able to build tlie world’s most expensive navy.—This shows the financial advantages of not winning the war.

Greymouth, which is this week to celebrate its diamond jubilee as a borough, began its existence es a European settlement in July, 18G4, when Mr. Reuben Waite landed on the beach and presently opened a store for the supply of the diggers who were gradually coming in to tlie greenstone. It was the Nelson, the pioneer steamer to cross the Hokitika bar on December 20, 1861, that had brought Mr. Waite to the Grey, but the rush to this locality did not set in until some months later. By July, 1865, Mr. John Rochfort, the pioneer surveyor and map-maker ot the West Coast, was busy laying off a township. Buildings were being run up of calico or timber, the latter being very scarce at the start, and stores were so scarce that candles sold at a shilling apiece, and other articles at equally fabulous prices. Township sections were soon selling at £l2 a foot, with a considerable annual rental on top of this, as the title was Native leasehold.

Although Greymouth never reached the dizzy heights of Hokitika, which ran at one time to a population of 5U.000, and was the first and last port of call for steamers trading between Australia and New Zealand, its prosperity has ‘been of a more enduring character, thanks to the coal industry, which presently developed. According to the historians of the West Coast goldfields no single claim in the digging davs yielded as much as £5OOO per" man, but plenty produced gold at the rate of £lO to £5O, and even £lOO per man per week. Mr. R. C. Reid, in his "Rambles on the Golden Coast,” records that when he visited the Okarito rush in the middle sixties he found the diggers keeping their gold in billies, the usual chamois leather bags being too small for the purpose. On the famous Five Mile Beach a party of four men, whose gold Mr. Reid bought, produced two billies’ full as the result of six weeks’ work, and received about £2200 for it. The people who left with the West Coast goldfields with fortunes to their credit seem not to have been the diggers but the storekeepers, hotelkeepers, who in the golden davs practised the art of relieving the lucky digger of his gold and giving him very little in return for it.

Mr. Reuben Waite, the pioneer of Grey mouth, it is interesting to note, has also a fair claim to be called the discoverer of the Buller goldfields, which he had prospected five or six years ahead of the rush. Coming from Victoria, Mr. \\ aite was at Collingwood in the goldfields there, in Mav, 1860, when some Maoris arrived with a parcel of gold from the Buller. Although traces of gold had the previous year been discovered bv Mr. Rochfort’s survev partv up the Buller at Diggings,” the prospecting there had liAen disappointing, and it was not until Mr. Waite’s party brought back pure gold that was exhibited in a jeweller’s window in Nelson that the Buller goldfield excited any interest. This exhibit started a lot of Nelson folk off to the new El Dorado.

Racehorses wearing spectacles may be expected some day, and when they do appear, ought to be worth a put.t. "Extensive experiments were recently carried out at a racing stable, at Lexington, Kentucky. Several horses with faulty vision were equipped with glasses. The animals did not object to the strange device strapped over their eves. Instead, they immediately gave indication of being able to see better Tests showed that the glasses served to reduce their running time an average of one second for each quartermile. In some cases a reduction of nearlv three seconds was made. Being an American idea, horn-rimrr.ed spectacles will no doubt be the correct thing. With these aids to better tracks times, no doubt some of the old fellows who have gone shortsighted through old age will display some marvellous come-backs. This is how a voting’ Japanese, ignorant of the English language, managed to give a phonic imitation of the first verse of “Tipperary*.’:— . Itsa rongu ue tsu Chipparari, Itsa rongu ue tsu go;.;, Itsa rongu ue tsu Chipparari, Tsuza suitesu gaarai no. Gudo bai Pikajiiri, Fuea-ue-ru Resuta Sukuea; Itsa ron-rongu ue tsu Chipparari, Bato inai haatsu raito zeya. A learned professor (Dr. W. C. Durant) has asserted that “a man past thirty is incapable of love.” Here history rises to object. Abelard was about'forty when he first met Helots?. In the love affair of Jacob and Rachel, one of the earliest recorded romances, there is further evidence of the fact that love does survive the thirtietu vear. Jacob’s passionate love fcr "Laban’s younger daughter can be no more questioned than of Abelard s love for Heloise. He worked as Laban s servant for seven years to prove the depth of his devotion; and his wrath when Laban bestowed Rachel’s elder sister upon him, instead of Rachel lie.self as well as his subsequent behaviour in the triangular menage, when Laban gave him Rachel as well as Leah, reveal that he was by no means incapable of love. Yet at the time he wooed Rachel he was well into the seventies. Pericles, who controlled the destinies of Athens five centuries subsequent to the davs of Solomon’s loves and glory, was well along in the prime of manhood when he entered upon his wcomg as Aspasia. Not that Aspasia was a difficult mark for gentlemen of Pericles eminence and standing, because her business was loving, and she was very catholic about it until Pericles came her way; but the story of the great leader’s love affair with this illustrious and gifted woman is one of the splendid romances of all history. This world is a well-furnished table, Where guests are promiscuously set; \Ve all fare as we’re able. And scramble for what we can get. —Thomas Love Peacock. Reporter: “Are you Mr. Spudde, the potato king?” Magnate: ‘.‘Yes, I am, but I dislike the term. Oil kings and silver kings and so on are so common. Call me the Potatentate.” THE NEW CAR. (A Wife’s Lament.) Along the road the hedgerows bloom Against the greenly grassy mead Where daisies gem the growing gloom— He chortles: “Gee, this bus has speed!” \nd. in quaint gardens that we pass, From trellises shy blossoms shower Old-fashioned fragrance on the grasslie chancres gears: “Gee, she has power!” The moon twines through the maple trees Its fragile fingers and the soul Of clover permeates the breeze— He tries the brakes: “Gee, some control.” —“Loudon ODiuion.”