ON THE COAST.

Otago Witness, Issue 1952, 23 July 1891, Page 39

ON THE COAST.

A. SOUTH AUSTRALIAN'S IMPRESSIONS OF WESTLANB.

(By "An Itiaerary " in the Adelaide Observer.) Kumar a— A Bich Mining Region —

A Thriving Public-house and a Shrewd Minister of Mines — Interesting- Methods of Goldgetting, Hydraulic, Beach Combing, and Dredging— Serious Effects Upon the Landscape—Copious Supplies of Water and of Behr— A Luckless Gold EscortDeserted Mining Towns— Hokitika —Twelve Feet and Two-thirds of Bain— Mount Cook— A Peculiar Cemetery — The Sullivan Murders.

Kumara lies on the banks of the Biver Teremakau, about 19 miles from Hokitika, and close to a thriving township called Dillman's. The latter is practically the southern boundary of the ascertained rich auriferous country which extends north and west to the Beef ton region, beyond the fine coal areas of Grey mouth and Westport. Much gold was got at Kumara before more than a few people knew anything of it. The coach used to run regularly along the road, and not even the driver was a*ware that about 12 diggers were making fortunes in the thick scrub near by. Not even the driver ; and what a coach driver does not know or cannot invent concerning a place would be a very poor news item. The pioneers, however, had some litigation, and when the lawyers went in the secret of course went out. Then people rushed to the place. Thirteen years ago there was no settlement whatever on the spot where now stands the flourishing town of Kumara, all of whose institutions are progressive, and whose extraordinarily extensive public-house interest is glorified by the fact that until lately one of its hotels was owned and managed by Mr Seddon, the present Minister of Mines, whose familiar appellation of • Dick " has been properly changed now for the more fashionable "Honourable Kichard." The really serviceable New Zealand Minister of Mines is a shrewd character well worth studying. He knows as much about human nature as Sam Slick or as Barnum knew.

An immense quantity of gold has been washed out of Kumara and the district round about, and operations upon the present scale at least are likely to last for another 20 years. Strictly speaking, there is hardly any digging for gold. ' The mining is all alluvial and hydraulic. The water is supplied along expensive flumes or channels, some owned privately and others the property of the Government. The coach road is crossed overhead in places by these aqueducts, most of which, being in a leaky condition, baptise you as you pass below. Waste of water In a wet country like this is not considered to be anything of consequence. This hydraulic system of mining is indeed possible only where there are abundant supplies of water. If the same rich auriferous deposits which exist here and right on to Hokitika were in dry South Australia they would remain undeveloped. They would be relatively as useless as a ton of diamonds to a starving man dying on a desert island. In all this region no true reef has yet been found. A hugh stream of water runs from the main channel through a hugh hose, and is dashed out of a hugh nozzle against the face of the cliff or bank where the lead of washdirt runs. These leads vary from 3ft to 14ft in thickness. The fierce dash of the water brings down grgat boulders as well as washdirt. The largest of these rocks are broken and then cast aside, but practically everything is forced into the long run of sluices, in whjch big sexagonal or octagonal blocks of wood take the place of ripples. The boulders go thundering down from block to block until they find their exit with the tailings in the river below. The men wash on for about eight weeks before they clean up the sluices, and after every operation just before the water is turned off they run a stratum of gravel down tha boxes to prevent any stealing of the gold. The claims are generally worked by partners on the basis of a true co-operation. All the men seem independent, contented, healthy, and happy. In most fields diggers generally swear by all which they consider sacred — not an extensive catalogue in some cases perhaps — that they are not making a living, even though they may be padding oatSOoz a week. In Kumara, however, I did not hear one man grumble, except because more water could not be^obtained. I suppose that on The Ark, the first oversea vessel of which there is any record, there were some people who objected that the Deluge was only a moderate success, and not quite what they had been led to expect. In one*large claim at Kumara the miners were permitted to use the nozzle for three hours only per day. They had a hose carrying what are technically known as 10 heads of water, and at 2s 6d a head a cost of 25s was made up as the price of the day's water. This hydraulic mining has caused a transformation in the landscape for miles around. Hills have been washed away and gullies have been sunk by man in defiance of Nature ; but Nature, unmalignant, has healed the scars which have laeen made by rapidly covering them with beautiful ferns and otner sightly plants. The very boulder 3 are quickly enveloped with what looks like a bright-coloured moss or lichen.

Nearer to the beach at Hokitika another kind of "mining" is done. It is called "beach-combing." The fast-flowing rivers, running many miles through auriferous country, wash put to sea large quantities of golden sand. Then by the flood tides some of this is swept back again to the shore, and is gathered up by the "beach-combing" miners, whose work is spasmodic, but very profitable. Still another means of goldgetting is the dredging of Jakes and rivers — an enterprise whose results seem to be generally very satisfactory. Some of the gold obtained in the district is of a peculiarly flaky kind, like a lot of thick yellow fishscales. The gold mining industry ia this place seemed when its representatives were interviewed to have some hope for improvement on account of the early removal of tho gold export duty of 2s per oz, which was used for local purposes, For that will now

be substituted a tax upon mining claims. Gold was discovered in New Zealand in 1842, but little mining was done until 10 years later. Since then an export of over £50,000,000 worth of gold has been recorded. The beginning of this Westland district was about 30 years ago, and the gold export starting in 1864 with a value of £5566 attained to nearly £1,000,000 for the year 1871 ; and though it has been gradually declining since it is still, reckoning the whole of Westland, nearly half a million sterling yearly. When these goldfields were opened — what a sensation they made in Australia, to be sure ! — the people at Christchurch and elsewhere on the east coast naturally exerted great efforts to obtain the benefit of the trade with the tens of thousands of diggers on the west coast. Hokitika was cursed with a bar-harbour and an inhospitable coast, which gave to the place the highest wreck record in any part of New Zealand. The eastern people made right across the island, the wonderful road over which we recently journeyed, and along that thoroughfare they tried to establish a gold escort from Hokitika to Ohristcjnurch. A costly shot-proof vehjcle was provided, and neoessary precautionary measures were adopted for the protection of the gold, but only ldwt was entrusted to it 1 The diggers preferred the sea passage. What columns might be written concerning this rich Westland district, in which the Midland Eailway Company will doubtless make millions for their shareholders t But time and space are well nigh exhausted. " Ichabod " would be a fitting motto for the settlements which lie between Kumara and Hokitika— towns with pretentious names like Goldsborough and Stafford ; old mining centres from whose neighbourhood the gold seems to have gone, and with it the adult male population, leaving at home women and children and Chinamen " f ossickers "—" — such robust women, such jolly-looking Chinamen ; old mining centres which still bear over tottering wooden buildings, bent in the gablea and shaky in the eaves, such tokens of former bibulous splendours as the sign of the " Cafe de Paris" (not merely one cafe, but three or four), and which yet retain public houses enough for a small city, if every man had his ; rights. Folks do say that the keepers of j these public houses thrive by patronising | each other. I don't see how else they can ! succeed unless the children and the China- ! men drink beer. I was assured by a man who was once a local preacher, and therefore cannot lie, that in the flush diggings | days Hokitika had exactly 99 hotels ; and though there are only 29 now there appear to be about 28 too many, unless the fishes drink. I hadn't thought of that. Hokitika altogether" is above all a place of liquids. I Even its harbour is a " bar," and as for the water supply — well ! j "How „ many inches is your annual I rainfall 1 " I asked one of the notables of Hokitika.

" Inches 1 My dear sir," said he, "we don't measure our rainfall by inob.es, but by feet, sir. Why, the smallest fall we ever had in a year was 7ft 4in, whilst we've had as much as 12ft Bin. What do you think of that?" ' - -

The pride of the gentleman was pleasant to witness. «■> He puffed himself up like a pouter pigeon. I have not known such selfexaltation to be excelled — no, not even by the boy who boasted that he had had more measles than any other boy in his school, and offered to prove it by punching the head of a scholar who tried to dim some of his glory. A very illogical method of argument; but if we laughed at it^we should have in consistency to laugh at the national wars "which were our conntry's glory and her pride 1 " Why, haven't we come to what we are partly because we have been able to punch the heads of countries who did not agree with our views of life's affairs 1 Hokitika itself, 156 miles from Christ* church, ought to be visited by tourists, if only for the sake of the magnificent sunsets and the splendid view, obtainable from the town, of the world-famous Mount Cook, or Aorangi, or the Cloud Piercer. From this distance of many miles the grand eminence looks, in its best aspects, like an immense dome of opal and ruby-tinted ivory, with fleecy white streamers above it and around it ; in what are spectacularly its worst aspects it is hazy and indefinite, so that it becomes almost impossible to judge rightly- where the Cloud Piercer ends and where begins the cloud which it pierces. In every direction from Hokitika — excepting in the west, where the blue expanse of the Pacific stretches away to Australia — lie other snow-topped mountains, the snow sprinkling and sinking into rank herbage and mixing with the thick growth of" trees until it reminds our practical old Badical, in one of his poetical moods, of a heavily bearded man spotted with lather from forehead to chin. A tour of New Zealand which left out Hokitika would be incomplete for other than spectacular reasons. The old Goldopolis of Maoriland offers to the visitor social attractions as well as romantic memories. The traveller is treated most hospitably in every direction ; even the sandflies are more assiduous in their attentions to him than the sandflies of any other place. They have quite a reputation in this respect ; in fact, whether you like it or not, they will attend to you. The only thing which really hurts their feelings is the kerosene rubbed by visitors upon their faces and hands — not the jsandflies' faces and hands, but the visitors'. The sandflies, however, live in hope of revenge for the affront. Some day a visitor, with his face smeared in kerosene, will light a match to light a cigar, and the match will light him. Apart from the discomfort to the victim a fire more or less in Hokitika will not matter much. From time to time a goodly number of Hokitikan houses have gone cloudward in smoke; in facb, burning was at one period a fashionable means of exit for a house from this mundane world. Some of the tenements which the fire did not burn the water washed away ; and after one special flood a few of the more enterprising houses went a sailing upon the Pacific Ocean. The Hokitikan buildings are chiefly of weatherboard ; and here, as in other settlements of New Zealand where building material, except wood, is scarce, a structure of brick or stone appears to stand out with glaring distinctness from amongst its neighbours, j

Such a house has a conspicuous, distingne appearance, as though it knew its superior qualities, and were putting on style accordingly. The general design of the town is excellent, though the main street seems to have been designed upon the angle of a boomerang, which may be accepted as a pleasant compliment to Australia. The town has a good museum, a good hospital, a good lunatic asylum, a good cemetery, with a magnificent view from its remarkable altitude^-an altitude so high that before the roads were made coffins had absolutely to be dragged up the hillside to their waiting graves. In this cemetery repose relics of an extraordinary number of people who came to their deaths by violence — drowning, falls of earth, and murder. At the main entrance stands a monument to Mr Dobson, the estimable young surveyor whom the atrocious Sullivan Gang of Thugs strangled in circumstances of horrible cruelty. The story makes one shudder now ; the Te Kooti massacres were not more revolting. It is so terrible as to make even a mild-mannered man question whether the New Zealanders did their duty by refraining from lynching the abandoned poltroon, Sullivan, who turned Queen's evidence so as to save his neck from the halter which ended the miserable lives of his comrades.