"SNYDER" IS INDGNANT.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1664, 29 August 1873, Page 4

"SNYDER" IS INDGNANT.

(fVow the New Zealand Herald.)

IJfST want a few minutes' conversation with some of those gentlemen connected with the newspaper Prees who are given to—well, let me be polite and cay—exaggeration. A few days baok I read an article in an Otago paper, published, I think, ; at the Dunstan, which stated that the Otago goldfields were the richest in the world ; that nothing before was ever like to them, and nothing that will come after will be a patch on them. My noble writer, will you permit me to say, in the most delicate manner it is possible to frame the message in, that you are a great ignoramus, and know nothing of what you are talking about. Now I am on my mettle, permit me to say" that the whole of the goldfields of Victoria once, and once only though/produced more gold in a single ten months than New Zealand has since the day the discovery was made that its soil was auriferous. I know something about goldfields, from the days of California to 'the Green Harp swindle, and so, I suppose; 1 have a right to speak out. Did the Dunstan ever yield seventeen thousand ounces of gold in one day, as Canadian Gully did ? Did the Dunstan ever yield twenty-two thousand ounces of gold a week, as the Eureka did?—gold, mind you, of quality worth over £4 an ounce. Did the Dunstan ever yield for three consecutive years forty-six thousand ounces of gold a-week ? Did the Dunstan ever yield one-half of-what the "White Horse" yielded, or a quarter of what the "Frenchman's" yielded, an eighth of what wan got at^ Fryer's Creek, or a sixteenth at Avoca, or a tMrty-seoond at Ararat? Why, of course it didn't. Then, what's the use of talking. • Now, as I'm on the subject, I just mean to tell a thing or two of what I do know about goldfields;—not what'-I've read, or heard tell of, or guessed at, but wlat has come under my own eyeeight.

It waß, I think, sometime in June, '51, that news I came down from the Pyrenees, a district lying west of Geelong, that gold had been found. The report was authenticated by a draper the same day exhibiting two pieces of quartz in hia shop window, containing altogether about sixteen ounces of gold. This caused people to become excited, Two days after this a Geelong storekeeper exhibited fourteen ounoes of shot gold, which had been dug out at Buninyong at three feet below the surface. This set people mad. A week after an old lodging-house-keeper, named Dunlop, came down from Ballarat with 113 ounces of gold, which he had obtained in two days at a spot he christened " Golden Point." Then people became delirious, and were seized with what was then, and for some time after, known as the gold fever. I got that gold fever myself; so did several others that I knew, and who knew each other. So we bought a team of working bullocks, whinh had not had quite time enough to "jump" in value to their weight in half-crown pieces, and we loaded it with flour, and sugar, and tea, and sardines, and salt beef, and medical comforts, such as brandy, a\eg of beer, and some Hollands gin, and lots of pipes and tobacco. Then the eight of us swore a solemn swear that whatever gold one got should be fairly and equally divided among the others. It was to be share and share alike, work and work alike, turn and turn about. It was a three days'journey, and rather more pleasant than a picnic. We saw thousands going, some with drays, some with carts, others with wheelbarrows or hand-trucks, some with packhorses; but by far the greater number with swags swung across the shoulders, which, whatever was scant or deficient inside of them, never wanted a shovel, a tin dish, a tomahawk, and a fryingpan on the outside lashings. We saw, as I say, thousands going, but strange —passing strange, and almost beyond belief—we met with soores upon scores of men returning. These, one and all, told us that what gold might have been in the " Point" was worked out; that there was no more to 'be got; that there was no gold anywhere else ; and that we should be losing time and tuckar by going on. But we did go on. We passed all classes of men bound for the rush — tradesmen, lawyers, doctors even clergymen. There were followers of all pursuits from the clerk to the laborer, from the laberer to the loafer, from the loafer to the keepers of brothels; women of ill-fame and bad repute were in oompany with well-known theives, and they pursued their abominable traffic unchecked in tents and calico shanties put up along the line of traffic. At this time, out of a police force of thirtytwo men, only three held to their situations, the rest having left for the goldfield. We were urged vehemently by*scorea of disappointed men to return from whence we came, as the Point had been cradled or panned out to the last pennyweight. Yei, doubt it who may, it was reported that Golden Point was "worked but" at a time when it was so rich with golden ora that within a period of three years it was reokoned over eleven millions of ounces of gold was obtained from this small field, although it did not extend over an area of more than from 200 to 250 acres. On we travelled with our team until we reached the digging ground, where we camped for the night. The next morning one of our party, an old Yorkshireman, ups and makes a speech. "Look here, lads," he said, "I don't know whether this piece of ground I've got my foot on has any gold under it or whether it has not. It's very nigh to where other chaps are getting the stuff pretty plentiful, so what I Bay is let's sink down here and go on sinking down till we come to something or nothing. If something, all right; if nothing, we can try again somewhere else." And we did measure off twenty-five feet square; for that was what we were told we were entitled to, and down we went opening up half the claim, whioh, because we knew nothing at all about gold-diggmg, or " driving," or " tunnelling," was just sinking a hole four times bigger than we need have done. I never could dig well, and what is more, I was not ashamed to own it, so my part of the business was this. When I saw two of my mates down in the hole looking, tired-like, I used to give two other of the party a glass of brandy a-piece, some sardines and bread, when they went down to relieve the two who had been at work. When these came up I would give them a glass of b"»ndy a-pieoe, and some sardines and bread. I wa» rather looked upon as the best man in the party, except the fellow who had undertaken the cooking department. I must say that as our whole cooking utensils were comprised in a tea-kettle and a frying-pan, I often wondered how he did it. It is true that sometimes the tea would appear to have a flavor imparted to it by having been made from water which had boiled the dinner bacon.. But in the days I am speaking of drinking water and water for cooking was mighty scarce, and I wouldn't swear at this hour whether, after the water had boiled the bacon, it was not used by the cook for washing his sooks before he made tea with it. It's a horrible recollection to be impressed on one's memory, but to this day I have not been able to get rid of it. Tbe cook was not bo much thought of when we oame to share and share, expenses at the end of three weeks, because he brought us in a bill of for seven pounds ten for fresh butter, at 6s. per pound, and eleven pounds odd for eggs, at 9s 6d a dozen. We thought he had been extravagant, and had been laying on the butter perhaps on the whole rather too thick, until he explained' that he had to use from a pound to a pound and a-half every morning to make the kettle boil. Then we thoughPhe had been unnecessarily economical. ■

So in about three weeks we had got down twentyfour feet, which was then the deepest hole which had been sonic on Golden Point. The chaps used to oome and look down upon our two mates—one picking and the other shoyelling—and they would say 11 It won't do my hearties," or " You're off the scent," or " You had better try lower down on the gully," or give some such advice, whioh used to rile the Yorkshiremari, who would fire up and tell them to go home and tell their mothers to wash 'em and put'em to bed. "Look here," he said to one of these croakers who had put hit dander up more than usual, "me and my mates hare sworn that we mean to go down until we get' something or nothing, and we don't mean to stop until we get on the gold or smell sulphur^— one or the other." I recollect it was a Thursday morning we set in to work about six o'clock, when, as I was just about giving the bands all round brandy and sardines as an early stomaohio, I heard the Yorkshireman sing out that we had bottomed on pipeclay. The next

minute ho said he saw the gold, and, by Gteotfge, he wan right. Scraping away the gravel for abottt five: feet square, we beheld a most sweet and lovely "jeweller's shop" opened to our gaze. Then we all sat round the hole, while the Yorkshireman pioked the nuggei's out of the pipeclay with his pooketknife, and pitched them up to us to admire first and, afterwards to stow away in chamois-leather bags, whioh every digger before going gold-hunting provided himself with in those days. It was a beautiful! speculation we bad tumbled on, and we felt it to be so, for we had taken out about seven pounds weight of nuggets and good-sized shot gold before we went to breakfast. But then, you see, we didn't breakfast that day until eleven o'clook at night. The next day we got about four pounds weight, the next we got a haul of two nuggets, one weighing eleven ounces and the other fourteen, besides a lot of bean nuggets. The day after we got five pounds more gold. The next day only something under one pound, when the Yorkshireman swore he wasn't going to work for a pound of gold a day for any mortal man, dead or alive. Then he made us all set to and fill up what he called the worked-out hole, while he commenced opening the new ground on our claim which.had not been touched. And we were doing no more than what hundreds of other claim-holders were doing, scraping gold almost by the shovelful, and this sort of thing went on month after month, the auriferous, fields extending further and further around Golden; Point until the area was miles in dimension. It went on month after month and year after year, so that for three years the average yield of the Ballarat district alone was, one- week with another, 46,000 ounces of gold; so I just have to request that the newspaper men of the Dunstan who talk about New Zealand possessing the richest goldfields in the world will be good enough to shut up, and oblige theirs truly, • . Bnydib.