SKETCHES ON THE SHOTOVER.

Otago Witness, Issue 1240, 4 September 1875, Page 4

SKETCHES ON THE SHOTOVER.

Part I.

THE FIRST COMERS. From the very first time that gold was picked up on the Banda of this modern Pactolus down to the present, its remoteness and general inaccessibility has always invested it with a sort of mysterious hal>, which none but the most enterprising have cared to penetrate. Hid away in the far-ou" mountains of the Wakatip, and draining the country for many miles around, includ njj a large portion of the eastern slopes of the great dividingrange, theShotoverspreada itielt into numerous forks and branches which bring downthesnow-waterfroin the glaciers, besides gathering together in their course innumerable sparkling little Btreams, ultimately blends them into one great rushing current of emerald green, beautiful to look upon ; for the operations of the ground- eluicer have not as yet seriously polluted the head-water<j of this wonderful and rapid-flowing river. It may, perhaps, be almost unnecessary to say that the very mention of the difficulties to be encountered in reaching this country of enchanting history was doubtless the cause of the most daring essaying to seek to discover its almost impenetrable mysteries, probably in the firm belief that the farther they penetrated into the unknown and wild, weird-looking hills of Otago, the greater would be their reward m gold. For the first few months after the Shotover had been occupied by the doughty knights of the pick and shovel, the most absurd and incomprehensible stories were current about the general capability of this "land of mountain and of flood." Harrowing tales were told of the difficulties and dangers attendant upon miners seeking it, and nowsome had loßt themselves and were starved in the ranges ; how others were compelled to beat a retreat because they could proceed no farther, or had failed to precure food ; how some had been drowned while crossing creeks and rivers, or had fallen over rocky precipices, failing to obtain sufficient foot hold on the narrow ledgeß of rock which they were compelled to climb round while forcing their way up the river, proved sufficiently disheartening, so that lit prevented many from making the 1 attempt. In one particular instance it was stated that a well-known Victorian miner and prospector from Inglewood had fallen over a rocky cliff, and had been caught in his fall upon a ledge, where his mangled body lay, with his red blanket swag alongside of it, for none could reach the remaiua to give them decent burial. If there existed anything approachiug the fabled Tom Tiddler's ground, from which nursery story many of us gathered our first ideas of gold digging, it must have been the Upper Shotover. Here lay gold for the picking up, glittering in the sands, or like a shiny thing in the crevices of the rocks, sometimes barely laved by the waters of the river. The jack-knife, tin dish, and pannakin of the miner, were, in numerous instances, all that were wanted, and composed his whole mechanical implements and stock in trade, save a bold heart to overcome whatever difficulties that mi^ht present themselves ; and it is a positive fact that many of these enterprising fellows, thus equipped, managed between early dawn and the going down of the suti to fill their panni kins with the yellow metal, for which they had braved so much to fiDd. But, Midas had not washed himself everywhere on the sandß of this modern Pactolus, and there was a very great deal that had not been turned into gold, because this Phrygian king had never touched it. Still, there was gold in other places nevertheless, but it required some trouble to reach its where abouts j and had it not been that the first | comers possessed the hearts of lions, com* bined with wonderful ability to persevere under difficulties and privations, they never could have reached the hidden portions of the treasure.

To obtain gold from the bed of the Shotover where the angry waters covered it was well nigh tantamount to making war upon Nature herself ; and then how great must have appeared this difficulty when viewed from the position of the adventurous miner as he stood upon the shore of the enormous deep gorge forming a riverbed a thousand feet below the level — if Buch it can be called — of the surrounding country, contemplating his helplessness, with the swift current running at his feet, and which he must turn on one side if he desires to reach the gold. His mechanical contrivances, consisting only of a pick and shovel, axe, and tomahawk, looked puny instruments to complete or even, attempt such an undertaking ; but it was done — and the wonderful ingenuity of the miner, in adapting himself to circumstances, and circutnßtances to himself, served to make even old Dame Nature lend a helping hand towards despoiling horaelf of her stored up and carefully guarded treasures. The axe, when applied to the forest, procured the necessary timber for making crates and causeways, which, being floated down on the bosom of the stream to the nier place, were fitted and put together ne form. The pick and shovel came into use to procure the stones to fill the crates or build between the piles of the causeways, Mstil a* Ifpfti) the wifori wwo fairly beateo

back, and where the swift current once fan was — comparatively so — turned into dry land, and at the mercy of] the daring fellows who had laid it tmder the contribution of parting with its gold. Many of these old wing dams and cause ways are still extant, and | for twelve successive years have- withstood the assaults of fierce angry and overwhelming floods, and although as a matter of course buried at times beneath the rushing torrent, when the waters have receded they are to be found again as staunch and as immovable as ever, lasting memorials of the skill, intrepidity, and prowess of the enterprising pioneers Avho had sought the upper Shotover, and the marks of whose handiwork neither time nor 11 lods seem likely to efface. TIIE KOAI/ THERE. If man has been prodigal of his labour in developing the riches of the Upper Shotover, the Provincial Government of Otago have been as equally penurious in doing their sHare towards helping along the poor goldseekers, so that they might achieve the mrre. These daring men in this quarter never asked for subsidiefi to enable them to work, or sought favours which would help them to s* irk it ; all they ever asked was that their fair share of the revenue might be expended upon making roads, so that they might work the more, and were satisfied to risk the 1 esnlt. But, because the Shotover is an out-of-the-way place, a deaf ear has always been turned to the claims of the people for justice, and only little imperfect paths, called pack horse tracks, have been constructed, and these mostly in places where the work of making them was easy and the engineering difficulties light, for, where rocks and precipices mostly occur, the miner is compelled to struggle on as best he may, breaking his shins, or perhaps his j horse's neck, as if no Provincial Government or Goldfields Secretary existed at all. Happily a change looms out in the distance : the death knell of Provincialism has been sounded, and its abolition is not far off, which, welcome consummation being attained, and the Gold Held* revenue expended upon the goli fields themselves, Upper Shotover miners will be done justice to in the end, in the shape of obtaining a cart road, which they should have possessed long since, for the more easy conveyance of their goods, stores, and mining machinery. The ranges of the Upper Shotover are, without doubt, rich in the possession of metalliferous veins. The native metals — gold, silver, and copper — exist there in abundance ; while there are also evidences of lead and tin ; and it is only a question of time and convenience when they will all be pro fitably wrought, and a good road, to make the country accessible, is one of the indispensable necessities to attain this object. All traffic, except that a man is walking, is performed on horseback; and toiling up and down steep ranges, round frowning rocks and precipices, to look down from which will oftentimes make your head swim, and, plunging through creeks and water courser, : may almost any day be seen strings of pack horses from either the Arrow or Queenstown, laden with the most hetprogeneous of burthens, which, upon careful inspection, you can. but wonder how they could be securely strapped upon a horse's back, and neither beast nor burthen sustain injury. Sheets of galvanised iron, long strips of boards and squared timber, reaching from over the horse's ears down to within a few inches of the ground at his heels, and more often touching it, are of constantly-recurring occurrence. Iron piping for conveying water to turbine wheels or hydraulic hoses ; doors, windows, __ and sashes, and sometime? ready-made iron chimneys, with fireplaces attached, are bundled by the packers— as the drivers of these horse trains are styled — with almost wonderful dexterity, and who adjust them to the inequalities of their horse's backs with extraordinary precision. Depressing one part to avoid striking some well-known and ugly overhanging rock, or raising another so tiat it might clear an awkward knob of stone sticking out of the ground at a certain dangerous corner, for wherever any very hard piece of projecting rock occurs the road makers or menders most religiously refrain from removing it. Having roughly placed his loads, the packer deftly introduces a strap here or a string or a tack there, or he tightens a buckle in another place, as he surveys hia loaded horses with the greatest of interest, handling everything as delicately and systematically as a dressmaker would do when fitting a new robe to the symmetrical or unsymmetrical proportions of some fair customer. Chests of tea, bags of sugar and flour, boxes of soap, or case 3of brandy and whisky, quartz crushing machinery, such as heavy stamper heads, shanks, or false bottoms, or bibles, as these solid pieces of cast iron are familiarly termed, are handled with equal celerity, and made to fit a horse so cleverly that it has almost become a part and parcel of the poor unfortunate animal's self. One man usually attends upon six horses, while he fide« another, driving the team before him. Bh leading horse, obedient to the call or crack of the whip, toila along briskly, keeping all the others at sharp walk, the train oftentimes | travelling twenty and twenty-five miles in a day without either food or rest. Sometimes an accident occura by a horse falling over a cliff with his load, but this does not happen so very often, and when such a catastrophe does result, it is usually during the winter months when the snow lays thick upon the ! ground, or when it is frozen or slippery from ice. Great care is invariably taken to have the horses' shoes properly sharpened, so that I accidents may be avoided, and when a horse is sufficiently tb.ua prepared he will trot along quite gaily over ice that a man could ! not poaßibly walk upright Upon unless provided with Borne means of support. I Packing a family of children is a rather | difficult and dangerous affair, and requires J much caution and judgment, as, unless they are of a pretty sufficient age, it does not do to trust them on horseback in the ordinary manner, neither is it considered exactly safe to carry a child while riding on horseback in your arms. The youngsters must, therefore, Bubmit to the exigencies of their position, and permit themselves to be considered as goods in the hands of the deftly-haaded and tender-hearted packer. To effect the successful transport over the mountains of some six or seven blooming olive branches, the packer select* the steadiest horses in hie

dinarily docile and intelligent.' HethenT proceeds to affix packing cases, carefully slung on either side of the saddles, and, surveyiug the children as they stand around looking on with wondering eyes at the preparations being made for their conveyance, he thus mentally calculates their respective weights, so that they may be equalised on the horses' backs — a very necessary precaution to, prevent the loads from shifting. The packer then divides' them into lots of twos, or twos and one, according to size, when into the blanket lined boxes they go, and when covered all up except their heads with shawls or coats, the small ones ride along as easily and comfortably as when they are in their own beds in the little mountain hut which they had bub recently left or were going to. You may frequently meet a posse of cluldrpn packed in this manner, with mater and paterfamilias riding on ahead, but casting anxious glances behind to see if Mr John O'Docherty with his team of horses is keeping up all safe with their precious burden. Mr O'Docherty is the owner of the train ; he knows his work and understands it thoroughly, and the children have taken quite a fancy to him, and their healthy, rosy faces peer out of the boxes like birds, fffkt of nests, as they chat and chaff, wi^fe Mr O'Docherty, making the sombrelooking, rocky solitude echo again with their merry shrill laughter. The new home in the mountains, the reader may imagine, is at length reached, and the children have been liberated, none the worse for their confinement, when there they again stand around in another wondering group. Mr O'Docherty discharging them upon the ground, as" a mat-, ' ter of course, like other goods, carried on his . horses' backs, proceeds onwards again with his train, to deliver what articles he may have for his customers, who may, perhaps, . be impatiently waiting the arrival of something they have for a long time needed. There are, of course, some few halting places on the road or track, where, should a pack train be unable to perform its regular day's journey, the owner might stay, or, as is usually termed, camp for the night. But he does not really camp, h«) stops within the bouse like other people, and having fed his horses he either stables them or secures them in a yard that they might not stray and the packer be prevented from making an early start in the morning. In some of these places there are quite ingenious contrivances for relieviog.the pack horses of their loads, the animals aro taken into stalls in the ordinary manner, the girth straps are unloosed, a pair of slings attached to a rope and pully are made to embrace both saddle and load, when the whole is lifted off the horse's back, sw inging high into the air, there to remain suspended until " it is time, to load again the next morning. At one of these halting-places — shanties, or, more properly speaking, hotels — I remained for a night, it coming on very dark and the track slippery with ice, I was afraid to proceed farther. Although rough looking in the exterior, it was a very comfortable place within, and assembled before the blazing fire I found another traveller, similarly benighted like myself. There were also two miners who had come up the river from their claim, some three miles distant, for the purpose, as they said, of meeting with some strangers that they might enjoy the luxury of a few hours' conversation with their fellow men, they not having seen any living soul to speak to but themselves for nearly five months, and bad grown tired of their loneliness. These miners were veiy intelligent fellows, and we all gossiped awayuutil past midnight, talking about the Shotover and familiar places in Victoria. The establishment possessed more of the appearance of a miniature sheep and cattle station, rather than a hotel. Its buildings, stables, outhouses, and sheds, occupied both su es of the track, and what with stockyards ami sheep pens, covered an extensive area of ground. The premises belonged to a worthy Scotch lady, a widow, with an only daughter, who was from home at school at the Arrow. The comely hostess, however, appeared to be rubbing along pretty smoothly, except, perhaps, feeling a little lonely when the days were so stormy that none would travel. The gude man oLjfc house, when alive, had cultivated a plow! ground on the little terrace upon which ne homestead stands, and had succeeded in rearing some very fine fruit in the shape of currants, gooseberries, and apples, thus making the Wilderness blossom eVen in this outlaudiah retreat in the mountains of the Shotover. He left behind him both cattle and sheep. The cattle the poor widow manages to run upon the goldfields commonage, but to depasture her small flock of 900 saeep she is necessitated to pay to a runholder a sum amounting to nearly £90 per annum, which, when all expenses are paid for the year, absorbs all the profjts, and she has decided to sell them whenever a favour* able opportunity for so doing offers. I had stayed at this place frequently in the summer months when journeying through the moantain fastnesses of the Shotover, and a very comfortable place it was to take a rest at, enjoy a drink or a meal while my horse also refreshed himself upon a Bheaf of oats out green from the field or pulled from the Btaok, I was away early in the mornings and & bitter cold one it was indeed, ererytliint was frozen like iron, while the very air Wai almost sufficient to bite your ears off. It Wai ice and icicles every wheie, and every stream let from rock or mountain was solidified.