MACKAY'S GOLD

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 75, 26 September 1933, Page 5

MACKAY'S GOLD

SOVEREIGNS IN SWAG-

HE BOUGHT A GOLDFIELD

WEST COAST ROMANCE

Becently the story of Thomas Brunner was told in the '.'EVeiing tost,," and'it was explained that ia "his long trip in 1846-48 he, penetrated from. Nelson, to Paringa (south of Okarito, in South WestlandV A decade later the difficulties of West Coast exploration were hardly less, and James Mackay, when he penetrated-to the Grey river in 1857, had to go as the Maori goes, barefooted or leaf-sandaled. In 1860 he blazed the track of the Buller-Iriangahua (Nelson to Grey, Biver) road. In 1863 he started a nevr career in the North Island as Govern* ment agent in dealings with the Maoris, A FABULOUS DEAL. His purchase in 1860 of 7,500,000 acres of the West Coast for £300— including land that has since yielded many millions in gold—is really a page in the Arabian Nights. Writing in the "New Zealand Bailways Magazine," Mr.* James Cowaa states: "Quite .the equal of Thomas Brunner as a bushnian, and his superior in knowledge of the Maori people and their life, was the * stalwart James Mackay, who in his old age in Auckland was well knows to the writer of this article. Mackay was the perfect type of frontiersman— ot. powerful physique,' indomitable courage and tenacity of purpose. From his boyhood—he ■ came to Nelson from Scotland with his parents at the' age of thirteen—h» was inured to rough backblocks life. Ho was sheepfarmer, gold-seeker, goldfields warden, explorer, and Government agent in Maori affairs; His exploring work began in 1855, and between that year and 1862 he traversed most of the north-west part of the South Island, tracing the rivers to their sources. la 1857 he travelled down the West Coast with two Maoris as far as the Grey; Biver. There, and also at the Buller^ he took soundings, and discovered the entrances to be navigable. He canoed' up the Grey, where he had some trouble with his Maoris. One of them he threw into the liver, and h© knocked another down in the canoe. . Mackay; was a man of abundant tact when occasion called, but he had a Highland temper, and he. was handy with his fists. Returning to Nelson, he carried in his swag the first sample of Grej; Biver coaL ,'■■■■ SAVED SOOHFOBT FBOM DBOWNINO. In 1858, 1859, and 1860. Jamet Mackay, his cousin Alexander Mackay; (afterwards Judge of the Native Land Court), and John Bochfort (the discoverer of the Buller goldfield) had many perilous adventures in the tor-• rent-split South Nelson and W^estland country. James once just managed to save Bochfort from drowning by; clutching at him as the furious current of the Taramakau swirled, him past. He was now in the ■; employ of the Government, and was entrusted with the task of purchasing Sou,th. Island Maori lands. He first bought for the Government" two and a half million acres of land on the East Coast, from Cape Campbell to the Hururiui Biver, and then he was instructed to negotiate for the purchase of the vast West Coast region, from Kahurangi Point, on the Nelson coast, southward to Milford Sound. . This was a task of great difficulty* not so far as the Maoris were con* cerned, but because Of the enormously; rough territory to be traversed search* ing out all the Maoris of the Coast,right down to the remote Mahitahi (near Bruce Bay). He and a com* panion, Mackley, set out from Nelson: and visited every little settlement where a signature was to be obtained to the document of purchase. Mackay; carried 400 sovereigns in his swag, and when he had concluded his negotiations he had 100 surplus sovereigns to carry; back to Nelson. He bought 7,500,000, acres for £300. Certain Native re* serves, including part of the present site of Greymouth town, were marked off on the map for the Maori owners; the rest of the Coast passed to the Crown. ,'; MAOBI PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES. Bough travelling, rough living it was, that greatest of all pioneer landbuying expeditions. Canoe _ capsiaes and narrow escapes in the icy. rivers were all in the day's work. Whea Mackay and Mackley reached the Mahitahi settlement, nearly two; hundred miles south of Hokitika, theyj were a source of great curiosity to two or three very old Maori women who had not up to that time (1860) seen any; white men. The strange Boats of the pakeha were described by the ancient wahines as "whare o te tinana'■ ("houses for the body")> their waist* coats "pakitua" (a kind of small mat)* and their trousers "whare kuwha" ("houses for the thighs"). .As fb* Mackay's footgear he was a thorough Maori; he had no boots, but wore flax sandals (paraerae), as his predecessor,Brunner, had been compelled to do ia his explorings. . The Maoris at the various far-scat* tered villages having been assembled, the payment for the Coast was made at the Mawhera. The Ngai-Tahu people, from whom the great purchase was made, numbered a hundred and ■ ten. So passed to the State a vast territory; which in a few years wa3 to produce1 enormous treasure in gold, and attract tens of thousands of eager diggers from all parts of the world. ' - Mackay was a pathfinder in the literal sense of the word. He pene* trated the most forbidding regions* sometimes alone, usually with two or, three Maoris. In 1860 he blazed the track through the bush down the Buller Valley along which the present motor, route goes, and on to the Grey Biver* This alone was a tremendous tas.k« Mackay told me about this experience, at Auckland in 1906. He and his three Maoris were once forty-eight hours with only one weka to eat between the four,of them. TO BE BHOT—OB NOT? That was one momentous phase.of; James Mackay's adventures and sex* vices in the vast untrimmed .places, of the land. He was transferred to the North Island when the Waikato Wai; began, for special Government duty, and his life there, from 1863 to the middle seventies, was full of incident;.a a record that would fill a book. '"I once had the experience," he-told me, "of sitting waiting for ten minutes while the Maoris debated whether theyj would shoot me or not." Whenever there was trouble in the Maori dis* tricts, in the nervous years following 1 on the wars, the Government sent Mackay to deal with it. Sir Donald Maclean, the greatest of our Native Ministers, had the greatest faith ia "Hemi Maki," as the Maoris called him; he was a man after Maclean's, own heart. ' :