A GOLD DIGGER'S NOTES ON OTAGO.

Otago Witness, Issue 663, 12 August 1864, Page 10

A GOLD DIGGER'S NOTES ON OTAGO.

(From All the Year Round.)

To judge from my own experience, the province of otago must get all the rain. Certainly I saw it blessed with the most plentiful supply of water. There was the sea all round, almost constant rain overhead, and the ground beneath so full, that great part of the flat was unworkable. One day, our tent was robbed of five ounces thirteen pennyweights of gold (nt three pound* twelve shillings an ounce ) I had always carried the gold about with me ; but on that day I left it planted in my stretcher, my mate promising t < take it when he went out. I went to visit some old mates f even or eight miles off, and to get din ncr with them (it being Sunday.) When I came back, the gold, aud nothing else, was gone. My pistols and watch lay close to it. My mate came home soon after, and said Ihe had forgotten it. He shortly left me, and I lived by myself, with a bull dog at the door, and a loaded revolver under my pillow.

One day I took my dog, a gun I borrowed, and a Ions; knife. A man went with me, and he had another dog. We crossed the ranges for about five miles, and found signs of wild pigs— fresh signs ; presently we saw a little white one sunning himself on the opposite range, sq we went quietly up, and throagh the fern, out boited three or four large, and a half dozen little pigs. I firei at a large one, but missed it ; the flogs gave chase to another ; and I toll 'Wed a couple of little ones, they doubling about in the fern, which was waist deep, like rats. At last I caught oue and immediately went to help the dogs, which had got by the ears ajboar of about sixty pounds weight It was nob very easy to stick him, on the side of a steep ranpe. I put the blade, six inches long, behind his shoulder up to the handle, and it, se°med to have no effect on him, but at la9t I got him into the gully and finished him. We then killed a sow of about a hundred pounds weight, and after a good run found more pias, one an enormous boar, but I killed none. We carried home the boar and half the other, and also the captured pigling — little "Denis" -a long tramp over the ranges, and it came on to rain, of course. I put the little one in a sty close to my tent, where I had him for some days inside. He would eat from my hand the first night; next day he would follow me anywhere. I lived on salt wild pork for weeks after that pig hunt ; a great saving where meat was from ninepence to a shilling a p>und, and hunger sharp.

Of eatables free to all, besides the pigs desceniJpd from those that Captain Cook left on the island, there are very fiae eels in the creeks. I have seen them of ten pounds weight, and heird of some weighing as much as twenty-eight pounds.

Nothing tb# richer for my first month's work at the Otago diggings, I was next packing to Fox's from Queens 'own and Prankton, to go with horses for wages. After that I went diggin? again, with my old mate, of course. The met we could make was about three pounds a week per man. We wf nt out to the district of Lake Wakatipu, which is half way between Prnnktoa and Fox's, and on the main road then just opened for dray* — the only dray road in this district. With an enormous amount of labar, having to carry all the materials a good diitance, we built a hut of twenty feet long by twelve wide, thatched it, fitted it up inside, and opened it as a store and accommodation house for travellers. We carried all the timber on our shoulders from the Kawarau river, down which it had drifted in the floods, to build that hut, at a distance of a mile and a half, and up several steep hills. My mate, who was a carpenter by trade, then heard of a job at tb.B camp at the Arrow (Fox's), putting up quarters for the commissioner, troopers,

There he worked two or three months, getting twenty five shillings a day, while I made a few pounds a week by our store.

You may think it foolish tor a fellow to rush about the country, and especially such a country as this, but from the very nature and character of digging affairs one can hardly avoid it. A. man comes to a place some time after it has been "rushed;' 5 after a good deal of running about, he gets a piece of ground that pays him for the working ; works it out, and can get no more. For, while he has been well employed, hundreds of later arrivals have been bu3y round about with pick, shovel, and tia dish, and have taken up every bit of ground worth working. The first comer knocks about for a while, idle, and then, perhaps, hears •of a rnsh. knows that if he is not among the first he stands a poor chance in comparison with those who are, .and chat if he ia, he may, by not unheard of luck, dear thousands in a few weeks, as some did at the first rush on the Shotover and Arrow Rivers. If he is a wise man, he rolls up his blankets and is off.

New Zealand is a hard country for the digger. High mountains, deep rapid rivers, and steepsided gullies to crosi, very little or no firewood in many parts, and a climate that suits those coming from England direct better than it does the old Victorian diggers like myaelf. Where I now sit, whether I look north, south, east, or west, I see mountains towering one above another, and covered with snow, except on brown-looking patches, which are precipices, or places too steep for tha snow to lie on. Mount Hemarkabia, which lies just over the Kawarau, and S.S.E. from this place, has had patched of snow on it all through the summer, which lia3 been a very wares one. I write now in midwinter, on the seventh of July. I should much like to see some of the birds that Mr Hassfc mentions in his account of explorations here, especially the Kakapo and the kiwi. We hay« the wekas, or wood-hens, also the plovers, kakas, and ducks, and some parrots. The kakas are something like cockatoos, but dark coknued, and with immense bills and claws. But the bird 1 should most like to see is the great moa; Id) not sea why he should not still be living in the densa forests towards the west coast, or rather in their neighbourhood. Moas have beea very plentiful here at one time, for I cannot take a walk acrcss the flits without seeing portions of the larger bones, such as those of the thigh, leg, and wing. There are several in my hut now, but none perfect. I have seen some of the bones full three feet long, and the joint ot part of a thigh bone is fifteen inches round, the eircumf rence of tho bone just helow the joint being tfn inches. These bones I picked up on the surface of the earth, where they must have lain ever sinco the bird died, ani muab have consequently wasted ; still, now, though greatly decayed, they are as heavy as fresh ox bones. I also frequently see collections of small quartz pebbles up to the size of a walnut, sometimes lying oa the flats miles away from any place

where stones are to be found, and no doubt from the gizzard of the bird.

We have had a fine winter here, though occasional rains and mild weather, melting the snow on the mountains, have kept many of the rivers too high for the miners to get at their beds. This has been especially the case on the Shotover, where the precipices that sbnt in 8 great part of its course mike it very difficult, and often impossible, to turn it. The floods which have come down that river every feY weeks have done immense damage to the claims upon it They sweep everything before them. A young Irishman was packing some rations'tohis claim on the Arrow while the Shotover was rising; he sent his load over in the ferry-boat, and rode his horse— he was washed ofi and drowned. Another man was washed from bis tent-floor by the side of the Arrow Ri?er at Fox's. People saw him earned away, but could not save him. There was a regular clean sweep in the Arrow River and Shotover— dams, races, pumps, Tiaterwheels, huts, winter stock, and everything ia the way of rations, carried away. Flooded rivers may well come down in force when they run at from five to seyen knots an hour, and sometimes. I believe, still mote, even when tha water in them is low.

We crossed some irightful mountains on the road from the Donsfcan to this place. My mate and I left some of our blankets at the former township, and got a fifty-ponnd bag of flour, besides tea, sugar, bacon, cheew, &c, both for use on the road and at Pox's, where flour wasthen eipthteenpence per pound, and sugar, I think, three shillings. While at the Dunstan we had to pay only sixpence to sevenpence per pound for sugar.

Well, we started after weighing our swags, which were about seventy-three pounds each, and made Pox's in three and a quarter days. Fifty miles by the rosd we came, sometimes having to hold on bj tufts of grass and rocks, to prevent ourselves from going too fast to the bottoms of hill-sides and gullies, and then haying to do the same to get to the top of another height. Sometimes we rolled np our trousers, and took off our boon, to cross piercingly cold streams that rcuhed over rocks and sharp slate-stones ; sometimes we had to walk after dark to reach somecamping spot where there w«o supposed to be sticks enough to boil a kettle of tea ; then, after a few hoar* of uncommonly sweet sleep, we would get up at daybreak to breakfast, roll up our tent and blanket, and go at a mountain as steep a* the roof of a honao, and so high that itwould take three or four hours to climb to the top of it.

I was glad enough to get to Pox'?. We had walked up to the Dunstan, oae hundred and; twenty miles, with aboat fifty-pound swags on our shomldeM, in four and a half days*.

Whsa I knocked off peaking up here, I walked over to the Donsi»a to fetck what we had left behiad, bat some una had beea there before me, and claiaed everything— blankets, shirts, boots, revolver. Snch robbery was rare in Victoria, where a maa hat keea kaowa to pin up his standing te«t, to go to Eogkttd and back, and on hl& retura find everything as he left it.

It rained for toeaey-fonr hours heavily oa Sumhy, the twtlftk of July, and there were several landslips about the Shoiover and Arrow Riveie. At > place callwl Butcher's Point, on the Shotof», a party of sere* men were living together in a hut, on the mountaia side, a little above th# river. Six were sleeping, and one was outside, looking out for the bouldors that every now aid thea came tkuadering down from above. Thes, all oa a sudden, at about three o'clock in the meraiajf, away w«t all the hill side, carrying wit* it the hut aid the dooaxad «ix into the river. Notfung has beea se<m of them since; the man on watce wsj loft standing unhart. A man living on the Arrow Kiver came oatsida hia tent about the middle of the sane night, when a landslip took his teat to where he wijl narersee it again, bat it did not toaoh hiou Aa enormous amount of danace ha» beem done on both rivers ; several poor fellows who lost ail eb» in the flood, had to run for their liree.

Maevy henea have bee» killed h»re by falling ; and I hare heard from several people that a man wa« to be sees lyiaf deai, with his swag, under a preaipica, where no one owld get near him . It was aemawhare towards tha upper part of the Shotover, la*t simmer. Mora than fifty lives are kkowa to haw htm lost on that river by flood* and landslips this wiater. Twelve men were killed in a n»ob ai one place, six in a hut at a«o»hes, five at a third, an«* go om. A good many of tha bodies wera reeevwei , some mosfc frightfully snteaaed a«i tora. There caanot have been flood* for very many yeeje at all like those of this winter, as is show* by tha drift timber and other signs.

&tm, a squatter who has th« catUe run here, also slavghters for the butobars, besides having many other irom in tbe fire. Laet week he had a mob of fa» cattle whitk h» bail bought down in Southland, and wm driving then up by the sida of tk» big lake, wbe« thirty-! I**1 ** of them slipped on s«m rotks at a place ciilai tha Devil's Stairca««, aad fell into » gilly, mi ware killed. The bias eealinok get ak thea to bloed them, so the meat will be entirely lout. Bew kad given forty--ix powdgfor one of th»m-tofc«l loss over LI4OO. Fiie country It ie teid thai Victoria oily wants fencing in* This iiiaad waits haaoMftac out flat. We h*<re beem overram with rats and mice lately; thsae plaguee swam, I believe, in all parU of New Zealaad. I caught s great many ia trap* of my ow» in*»nti«. I also got som» s:rjc«»i*e fron Dsaadin, where it sells for a guinea an ouncs. It pmt tv stop to their mischief pretky quickly. Before I had th« poison and my trapi, I could not ke*? meet, flour, caudles, soap, or anytkiif at all eatable. My head, as I lay in bed, Tra» a favorite sprin^ing-place for the rats whe wihed to gat upom the table. They gnawed a large hole in tha bottom of a bullock-hide boat wkick we have on the lak». I have since bought a kitten for seven and sixpence, of a man who *i* going away ; he hai carrisi it about a hundred aad eighty milee on tha top of his swag. The g«eral price hsre for cats, is now from thirty to fifty shillings. It was still more. A man passed through this plaea with a horse-load of them in boxes, which he brought from Dunedin. a faw week* ago.

The Committee of the Ofcago Benevolent Institution have received the following sums on behalf of the Institution :— From the Licensed Victuallers of Dunedin, per iavor of T. Calcutt, Esq., £45 9s 6d ; from Mr Jones, of Queenstown, per favor of R. Beetham, Esq.,. R.M., £16 3s Od ; from John Dewes, Esq., J. P., £14 10s 6d. •