TE AROHA.

Observer, Volume 1, Issue 14, 18 December 1880, Page 126

TE AROHA.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

I AM not a digger, that is, in mining parlance. I heard a fellow say the other day that diggers or miners were like poets, not made, but born. The reason that I know that I am not a digger is because I am entirely ignorant of the technical terms used by those who have for years past dug and delved into the bowels of the everlasting rocks. I know but little of geology, and believe eveiy substance, other than red sandstone, granite, and quartz, to be porphyry, which I take to mean any substance that you are not acquainted with — a sort of geological dodge to> get over a difficulty. Although being generallylooked upon as a dry customer, I have, strange to say, an unquenchable thirst for gold, which has never yet been, by a very long way, slaked. Such being the case, it is not surprising that, upon hearing that gold was sticking out of the Te Aroha mountain, I determined to join the forlorn hope and assist in the assault. After being penned up in a small steamer from early morn until closing eve, I arrived here two days before the opening of the field, and I spent that night on the cold, cold ground in a dry ditch, under a weeping willow — and to which said willow I will owe an everlasting debt of gratitude, for it has sheltered me. One of the fast and powerful steamers which ran here made the passage from Grahamstown to Te Aroha in about seventeen hours, at which the people, and especially the passengers, wondered much. The stream that percolates through this part of the country is called the Waihou, but why, or how, it is so called, I don't know. Te Aroha, I am informed, signifies in Maori— "The Mountain of Love ;" and is held in great veneration by the Maories, who also have some yarn about its being the ' ' mother of gold." I hope it is so, and that that mother will give birth to tons, and for many a long year will periodically be in an interesting condition. The opening day was a regular field day — reminded me much of a race meeting in the old country, with the tents, the excitement, the drinks, the horses and crowds, and the Maories, not a bad substitute for the roaming or gipsy tribe. I pegged, of course, I did somehow ; I climbed \\\), with a party, the prospectors' spur, and thence tumbled up a creek and put in a peg close to a bunga or punga tree. I put in a peg where I did because I was told that something would come of it. The peg had to be put in at the sound of a gun to be fired at 9 a.m. Where I stood the bush was dense, but through the openings of the trunks, branches, and leaves, I could see numbers of desperate looking individuals, each armed with a peg. I was surrounded with shark-headed fellows ; they were as thick as what-dye-call-it leases in autumn. If I had been a Franc tireur in the Franco-German war, I should have said that it reminded me of the skirmishes in the pleasant woods of Ardennes, on the look-out for a German advance guard ; but, to be frank, never having been a Franc tireur, or in the woods of Ardennes, the comparison would be odious. The gun went off, and my peg went clown into a small hole that I had cunningly made, and I waited to see what would come of it. I did not see any gold, but there was a loud hurrah and a yell from a crowd of natives that made me almost draAV out my peg again, and stood ready to slay the first half-dozen that attempted torush me ; but it turned out to be a yell of joy, and then there was such a running and scrambling and shouting out Nos. of the miners' rights, and showing of pegs to Mr. Maclaren and other officers, as never was seen. I now discovered that I and my party had pegged right into the middle of where Mclntyre and Frater had found gold. Over fifty men had pegged in the same place. Mclntyre did not seem to like it at all, and got into a regular scott. Big Frater and Peter Ferguson didn't say much, but no doubt thought the more. It was afterwards arranged that Aye were all to be shareholders, my whack I sold the other day for £30. I believe the shares were sold yesterday at about £35. lam beginning to have an idea that after all I am a born digger — time will tell.