A HUNDEBD AND TEN DAYS IN THE WILDERNESS.

Colonist, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8306, 22 July 1895, Page 2

A HUNDEBD AND TEN DAYS IN THE WILDE RNESS.

[By Jonathan Brough.] (Concluded). ConcEBNiNG the appearance of the oountry in the vicinity of the Karamea Pasi from a gold digger's point of view, I may at once state that I Hoe the look of the place very much myself, bat as I indicated before, I had no time t) prospect. Howtver, next summer should I cot be otherwise engaged, I would bb soon speed three months in the neighborhood a'luied to as in any other placeltnow. Ac this is moet'y a coatga

gold country any amount of patience is nece:-B3ry io prospecting and exploring i.h : s primative wilderness where the undesrc ub is seldom d y, a>d wbe'e, if it is not ra.nina thetre<34 are mody dripping wet, twing to the dense foga ond sp.ngy na nre of the wooJs. It is enr.ll wonder that the upper Karamea, and its tr hntarie3 remain oomparatively unknown. The oouatrv has onl> been run over ccossionally by men known hs exploring dippers — men of a hardy type. But, however hardy a man miy be, he will invariably br'jak diwn, or beoomo disgusted af'.er a very few monhs in country such as that I refer to, when there are no trncks by wh eh he m.y obtain eupp ! ie?. Whether there ba g »ld or no pold, the hardiest of men become difgusted under 3<;ch conditions. Ju-it fancy a man loading up and Currying on bis baok what he needs to prospect such a country — tent, blankets, fljur, baoon and other provisions, frypan, prospect ng pan and tools among ot r >er requirements— and With this loading on his baok, to enter a traokless wildortiuss and do b-t'!e with busti and rooky gorges, often wading over pnowfields, climbing mountain liiges or s.ruggliug, thigh deep through swamps or rivers fei by snow water. Scrambling through wet forest?; or tangltd scrub, und jiogle over Wet sony beaches, and all kinds of angular rocks through debris, aud all kinds of roogh end tumb:e plaoea, such as are well known to exp'oring diggers. I hope the reader will understand me, for when I write this, I am Bimply venting from a very large experience of high and rough country. Twenty-seven years ago I was one of a party of seven who went down the Crow river. Two of the men and myseif had just come to New Zealand after having been prospecting in the (j ; ppsland AU s. We joined a party of four New Zealand diggers 01 the Baton go'dfie'd, where, in tho^e days,. Mr Butcl ffe kept a store, and it was from his store we to k our BupplifS. We prcceedtd up tne Skeet, a tributary of ihe Baton, and we went through Ly whit was cal ed at that time Bought yes', get ing down into the Crow, and following that river down to the Karamea. It took us four and a half day 8 to go down 1119 Crow, though the distance could not have been much more than ten rni'es from whe;e we struck tne valley, to where that iiver j .ins the Karamea. It was s mply owing to ihe difficult nature of the country that we were to long, for if I remember right y we did very li tie prospecting going down tbe Cr.w. We riei sjme gravel dr.f^s about f» mila or thereabouts up the river from its mcv b, getucg what was termed fair 8 uieing ptospeots, but we did not stop as one of our party had been out with Mrßjchford, and Le said he knew of a b.tter place between theLeelie river and the Roaring Linn bo we hurried on to this said place, where we set in and partially worked out a river beioh. Some of us worked the claim, and others packed the provisions in t) those at work. Two of my mates and myself /el. in for the task of Bwag&iog sapplie*. Some we oarried over what was called Jones' Saddle, and some loads we brought by tbe way of the Table Land, an<i down the Peel river, but before this beioh wai worked out our par.y got unsettled end broko up. Sme tried the Roaring Lion, Eome we jt up ths Leslie aod the Pet 1, but after f.ur months of this work W8 had to give it up as moat of us were koookel up owing to havirg t> b\vag supplies without track?, and so we decided to leive ihe wilderness. It was not because we did not find gold — on the contrary we found gold in many places ; notbicg rich, but what would have been considered good wage 3 in those dajs if men ooaid have got supplier packed over the ranges. The oldest man and the hardiest of our party was a Welshman, whom we ca'led 'faff, and who is at tbe present time on the Collingwood goldfield. Tbfi remained in the district I have referred to for sjme tiina af;er we were all knocked up, but for the la^t twenty years or mors he has beeu working at a far up place called Bluj Creek, fourteen miles from Col" logwood, working amongst the old giavels, working as a " hatter." George Tdomas, better known as Xafl that hardy old Welhman — still digs. Most of the rest of our party at the Crow went baok to Australia, and many years afterwards I had le'teis from some of them. Thay had travelled muoh and explored a deal of country, but when they wrote they wanted to know if pack tracks had ever been put into the Upper Eardniea. In their letters to me, they said they lud Been no better looking qiarz or mineral drif;sthan thsy saw on the Loalie and Crow river?. Juet st the present time, great are the arguments as to whioh is tha best place to put a tiaok to open the Kara me i and her tributaries. It is really necessary, i( money is available, to put fonr tracks into this country. Tbe one now going down the Karamea, and oloee to the head waters of the Mokibinoi, and to the mouth of tbe Crow, wi 1 be tha first. The next should be from the Wangapeka, up Eiwi oreek, striking Taylor creek, one of the tributaries of the Crow. Another should be made up the Skeet, and through Hough's Pass, striking nearer the head water of the Crow. The other should be from tba Baton, crossing Jorjea' Saddie and striking the Leslie river below the junction of the Peel and the Leslie. All of these tracks will open golden country, and it ia a question yet to be answered whioh would be the best. The two laßt mentioned traoks were par ly opened some five or twenty years ago, at a time when gold could be obtained muoh easier in other places ; when, too, ten to twelve shillings per day oou d ba g.t for road worfi. Now all that is changed ; mostly all the shallow r.ver drifts have been worked out, and the unemployed element is a big one throughout the whole world, and unless some of these places are opened out by Iha making of Irasks the unemployed, even in thn place, will soon become a serious difficulty. I may here state that when I left the Karaxusa Saddle, two of the men who had been working t on the new track were fixing up abut, and were about setting in to dig for for gold within half an hout's walk of the Saddle top. I must oonfeES that many a time I have heard exploring diggers speaking around the camp fire of this mineral region, aud saying if it was only properly opened up by traoks, that a few years benoe instead 01 Ibis wilderness inhabited only by a few silent birds, clearings would be visible, Bnd in nearly all these valleys would be found the dwelling* of men and a busy population of minerß enlivening the wooda around. Quartz crushing machines wou d ba beard far up the gullies, and busy life and animation would be apparent everywhere. Old dggers at times become imaginative when engaged in exploriog a wilderness, but many is the time that practical and ma'.ter-of fact diggers have come to the conclusions I have indicated. Ab my paper baa already become somewhat long, my notes on other observations ia the vioinity of the head waters of the Karamea, 1 1 must reserve for another occasion.