MEN AND MANNERS ON THE WEST COAST.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 476, 11 March 1869, Page 3

MEN AND MANNERS ON THE WEST COAST.

A book entitled " Greater Britain " has been written and published by Charles Wentworth Dilke. Some of the quotations which we have seen made from it have been reasonable enough, but the following, which is quoted in some of the Home papers as a description of " Singular Characters in New Zealand, " indicates the author's possession of more imaginativeness than inquisitiveness as to facts:—

The Gold-Coast Police Force, which has been formed to put . a stop to Thuggism and bushranging, iB a splendid body of cavalry, about which many good stories are told. One digger said to me—' Seen our policemen? We don't have no younger sons of British peers among 'em.' Another account says that none but members of the older English Universities are admitted to the force. There are here, upon the diggings, many military men and University graduates, who generally retain their polish of manner, though, outwardly, they are often the roughest of the rough. Some of them tell strange stories. One Cambridge mar, who was acting as a post-office clerk (not at Hokitika), told me that in 1862, shortly after taking his degree, he went out to British Columbia to settle upon land. He soon spent his capital at billiards in Victoria City, and went as a digger to the Frazer River. There he made a • pile,' which he gambled away on his road back, and he struggled through the winter of 1863-4 by shooting and selling game. In 1864 he was attached as a hunter to the Vancouver's Expedition, and in 1865 started with a small sum of money for Australia. He was wrecked, lost all he had, and was forced to work his passage down to Melbourue. From there he went into South Australia as the driver of a reaping machine, and was finally, through the efforts of his friends in England, appointed to a post-office clerkship in New Zealand, which colony he intended to quit for California or Chili. This was not the only man of education whom I myself found upon the diggings, as I met with a Christchurch man, who, however, had left Oxford without a degree, actually working as a digger in a surface mine. In the outskirts of Hokitika, I came upon a palpable Life-Guardsman, cooking for a roadside station, with his smock worn like a soldier's tunic, and his cap stuck on one ear in Windsor fashion. A ' squatter' from near Christchurch, who was at the Buller selling sheep, told me that he had an ex-captain m the Gruards at work for weekly wages on his ' sheep-run,' and that a neighbour had a lieutenant of Lancers railsplitting at his 'station.' Neither the habits nor the morals of this strange community are of the best. You never see a drunken man, but drinking is apparently the chief occupation of that portion of the town population which is not actually employed in digging. The mail-coaches which run across the island on the great new road, and along the sand to : the other mining settlements, have singularly short stages, made so, it would seem, for the benefit of the keepers of the ' saloons,' for at every halt one or. other of the passengers is expected to ' shout,' or ' stand,' as it would be called at home,' drinks all round.' 1 What'll yer shout ?' is the only question, and want of coined money need be no hindrance, for 'gold-dust is taken at the bar.' One of the favorite amusements of the diggers at Pakihi, on the day,'when the store schooner arrives from Kelson, is to fill a bucket with champagne, and drink till they feel ' comfortable.' This done, they set themselves in the road, with their feet on the window-Bill of the: shanty, .and, calling to the first passer, ask him

to 'drink from the bucket. If he consents—good ; if not, up they jump, and duck his head in the wine, which remains for the next comer.