LOOKING BACKWARD

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 January 1926, Page 2

LOOKING BACKWARD

SIB J. SMITH’S MEMOBIES.

is Sit’’- Jbynton Smith, • whose life story is ;published' J / '-‘Smith’s Weekly,'” - haS the' 1 folloivifig 'i liitetesting recollections Of > the West Coast, at the time he was-a steWrd on the little'“Maori,” of 187/tons'. He states: The lqre of-th© goldfields gave us a brisk passenger traffic from the adv’en,turous spirits of the times. My chief steward had a little pocket that show-ed-no signs, of .petering, out. This is how he had worked it. He would buy a lot of r smoked blue cod at Dunedin at, I remember, Is a fish, and take his consignment (not on the manifest, of Course) to Hokitika and “The Grey” (Greyittouth), where miners would willingly pay 10s lot a cod. On his salary of £lO a month the chief steward already seemed rich to me. Still, he had a wife and family, and having a Wife afid family to keep has always been the stock use for augmenting an income by a side-line at sea as well as ashore.

At Jackson’s Bay, on the, West Coast, - there were then about 200 miners living on alluvial gold. They would'bring ‘-their yellow' 'winnings 1 aboard and have it weighed and make purchases according to the tale of the scales. It was my job to supply them with bottles of whisky, from which source the takings in a couple of hours would be well over £2OO. I notice that they still have continuance in New Zealand. These miners would row off in whale boats and the sandflies were so bad that these hard and bronzed men found it necessary to wrap paper round their necks and arms against the rav•ages of these pests. Ashore there were saloons and dance halls such as we now see in the movies when Western mining camps of America-provide the background for the scenario, writer. You paid a couple of shillings for a dancing partner, who was the usual heroine, moving on a floor peopled by chivalry in shirt sleeves. Far be it for me, to destroy any illusions on' this score. When my youngest reader is as old as I he will hang on to every . remaining illusion as a miser to his gold. And he will be wiser than the miser. The place that stands’ out most vividly in my mind was at the Buller (Westport), and it was run by Tim Sheehan. For to Tim’s hall we took along johnny Morgan, an Irish comedian, and his wife. The lilt of his, rollicking song-—

I am a man, an Irisman, As you can plainly see; I Idike a drap ttv whusky When I’m upon a spree! With a bit of a sthick'T do the trick And give the girls a warning—(here he would shake his shillelagh). comes back to me as I recall the scene: the hall full of miners, the bar in full swing, and Tim Sheehan’s face like a full moon.

I was to see his hall with the rest of the town go out to sea the time of the. big flood. There was something t&rribly ' elemental about life and nature .there as I recall it now. The rise and fall of the tide was something over twenty feet, quite awesome in itself. ' But gold was there and where gold is' privation goes unnoticed by men who seek it. . , «. Yet : I have literally trodden this yellow metal • underfoot- day after day, and taken no notice of it. In the skif)- ■ .per’s cabin,- level with the step which kept the water from the decks awash from going insfde, there WOuld be boxes of gold,'each worth £5OOO, packed on the floor. We used to walk on these boxes. To-day they are carried in strong-rooms. Then they were just left carelessly about to be taken to the banw on arrival at Dunedin. And there is no record of there ever having been a shortage.