WILD WEST COAST TAMED A LITTLE NOW.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 25, 31 January 1911, Page 3

WILD WEST COAST TAMED A LITTLE NOW.

THE GLORIES OF OTHER DAYS. (By Eareye.) The skeleton of tnc old log nut Is ttandiug theie in its solitude. And thistles and mallows, thick and rank, Are spreading over the camping ground, And weeds grow strong in the garden plot ; The flowers are dead, and the 'er.ee is down, And the rosebush hedge, with straggling stems, In v.ildness grows, like an untrained child. — Thomas Bracken. He was as much out of his natural element in Willis-street yesterday as "Lizzie," the hippopotamus, was in the circus tank. That part of his face not screened by bushy beard was tanned and scored like a walnut by Time's pitiless etching needle, and kind eyes, not dimmed by all the stress of etormy years, looked out brightly, but in some bewilderment, at the passing show. "I'm a West Coaster," he said simply. Magic words once in Wellington! Those syllables had power in them to throw open the Prime Ministerial doors during the regime of "Digger Dick." The Coast was good to Mr. Seddon in his climbing days, and when he was at the top ho wao £ood to the Coast. A cynic said in a newspaper a few years ago that the West Ccast well deserved the title that it claimed— the "gold coast"— because more Government gold was sunk there than in any other district of New Zealand. It is another era, another Ministry, and the Coast's cap does not catch 60- much. STONES, STONES, STONES. That grey old main went his way, but his words had slipped eleven-^years from his hearer's tally. In February, 1899, Brunner, once fired to lively progress by the coal, was half as sad a.s a cemetery — a grey town dying by the Grey River, j , Scores of cottages had been abandoned, and the vagrant wind pushed coal-dust through the shattered panes. People went into the forsaken houses, and ripped timber away for fuel. The eun- I shine seemed a mockery in that desolate place. Only an ashen fky or night's kind mantle was fitting" cover for the stricken streets. It was a dreariness that numbed, and two pilgrims (the writer and a walking mate) were glad to escape after a night'e sleep in one of thft deserted shacks. The dismal wind made eerie music through the gaping boards and broken glass, and filled Brunner with the ghosts of brighter days, long gone. But there was a rally in later years. Hokitika was brighter, but what aHokitika after the vanished golden days, when the population' was a roaring thirty thousand, and merry music from the bars and drinking saloons soared above the cries of the wekas in the wilderness, not far away. In 1899 one saw 'a baker's stable and one of the boavd'e was inscribed with HO. A butcher's lean-to had a patch of TEL. Thus passed many of the hotels of the feverish days. These poor degraded boards could tell a, few storiea. And there was Hokitika,, frowsy and frumpy, an old-young town, with not a touch of shabby gentility. Kumara (ever dear to "Digger Dick") was in better plight, but even the Kumara of 1899 was only a relic of a. greater one. All the country roundabout had been ripped up in the frenzy for gold, and the aluicers had swished away all the soil. Immense, mounds of dingy boulders and rocks afflicted the <:ye, and a water -race here and there, and the boom of blasting were reminders that the endless battle for gold was not yet over on this rugged field. Between Greymouth and Hokitika, Hokitika and Kumara, Kumara and Jackson's always ■one saw stones,^ the monuments of the struggle with Earth for her well-hidden treasure. REDUCED TO FOSSICKING. Sometimes, not far from the track, an old man was stooped. He was fossicking in poor sand or gravel, or long-abandon-ed tailings, for a few yellow specks. Ho was one of the brave baad that threw gold about like drosd in the giddy times — and 'one little speck was more to him now than a ten-ounce nugget then, j What sad tunes, perhaps, the wind played to him there by the -srate: 1 . Ono veteran, grey and bent, was slowly raking sand by the edge of a creek. Near him was a water- wheel -which h?d dona its last turn. Moss and ferns clustered upon it, and *naky vines romped over it. An old engine rusted by the still wheel. And the old man raked and raked, and did not look up. The wayfarers silently left him with his thoughts. THS END— HOSPITAL. The fossickers were righting to keep themselves out cf hospital It was long ago complained against, the Coa^t that the hospitals were tending to bs old men's homes, where the broken army of the gold-hunters found rest at last. It was a very little place alter the open hill-side and the freedom of the bush", a very colourless time after the strenuous years. Poor old warriors, with just encugh strength left to hobble abjufc and tell one another atones of happier days. It is said that the way, to the hospital is not- now so easy. The Coast ha* been "hardened up" after a few skirmishes between departmental and local authorities INDOMITABLE. The Coast's glory was reduced, but the general mass of the people declined to bo dif.mal. Their hearts remained big, lik? th« mountains beside them. They "lived along." Critics may say that railway works which have washed away, i listed or decayed to rottenness., and other uses of public money to "no good purpose, except the West Coast's comfort, did help in the less golden times, but even with this allowance granted, the adven titious £id was. not sufficient 'v explain nil the cheerfulness. Hop© stimulated them and fed them. It ii, a shiftless faith on .the Coast that it will some day come into its own again, and more. The Coast was ever kind to strangers, and it is alleged that in time the Coast looked to strangers to do something, for the Coast— that if the strangers had a contract or other big business on the West, tho Coast became a co-operative socictv to cut him up. Well, is that not human, even if true, to which this deponent can give no warrant? This witness, who had nothing but a dilapidated swag to offer, received much kind treatment on the Coast. DREAMS OF THE FUTURE. i The Coast hopes for much from the Midland railway, on which many thous- | ands of pounds were wasted a few years ago on the Ofcira side. The Coast has ooal and timber and a store of gold yet in river and mountain. There are men, not idle dreamers, who predict that Greymouth will be a large city within a couple of decades, with a fortified harbour big enough to tuck iv a warship or two. Why? Coal, beautiful coal, and other things. During the past year or two the Coast hai> indeed btepped more into line with the progressive parts of New Zealand. When Mr. Massey went down there la&t 'year he confessed himself agreeably surprised with the country's resources and activity. From a scoffer Mr. Massey was converted into a praiser of the dear old West Coast.