MR WAITE'S NARRATIVE OF DISCOVERY.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 534, 24 July 1869, Page 2

MR WAITE'S NARRATIVE OF DISCOVERY.

Mr Eeuben Waite has already achieved, for his name and memory, that immortality which mortal man often lives for and too often dies without gaining! If his pre-emptive right to the Pakihis of the Bailer district has not been fully recognised by the Nelson Government, his posterity, if he has any—for we are not acquainted with his family registerwill, at least, have the satisfaction of having their father's name associated with what is at present not worth a sixpence to him or to anybody else, but what takes its place in the maps and records of the Colony as " Waite's Pakihis." By some simple, if fortuitous, circumstance, his name is also associated with what is worth a great niany individual sixpences to another scarcely less historical personage—to wit, Mi* Tom Jones, proprietor of the Orawaiti Bridge Hotel. Por it is written in the history of the Buller district that this particular locality, the Orawaiti, in the language of school geographies, " derives its name " from the Maori mode of expressing the words " Come on, Waite," —words not used in a spirit of defiance to that gentleman, but in the courteous spirit which may naturally be supposed to have existed among the native residents of the Puller district when, as we are told, they " saw his vessel approaching, and wero in want of provisions." This, it may bo thought, should be immortality sufficient for any man ; but it is not so in the case of the active and ambitious Reuben, for he has written a " Narrative of the Discovery of the West Coast Goldfields," and, faith, he has printed it. We have before us this shilling's worth of narrative, and are tempted to transfer some proportion of it to these columns, but respect for copyright, and for an author's sensitiveness, as well as his pecuniary profits, deters us from any act of piracy. There are some thousands of copies " on hand"—at Ilounsell's, Nelson, and at Munson's, Bishop's, and Baird's, Westport—and there are thousands of shillings which " on these diggings" are probably put to a worse use than they would be if invested in the purchase of this pamphlet of thirty pages, containing what Mr Waite remembers and thinks about the discovery of gold on the West Coast. Of course if, as a historian or as a commentator upon contemporary events, Mr Waite does uot present all the merits entitling him to immortality, it is always an ingredient in the estimate of his work that it costs only a shilling, and that its contents are, if in style somewhat similar, at least a shade more reliable than the " tales of a traveller " which have lately been published about the West Coast in the costlier book of a much more cosmopolitan author—Mr Hepworth Dixon. If the reader will not discover very much besides what is already known about the goldfields, he will, at least, have a more intimate acquaintance with Mr Eeuben Waite, his reflections upon the past history of the Pakihis, and his hopeful estimate of the future of the Buller; and that, of itself, is something. According to Mr Waite's account, the primitive prospectors of the West Coast w r ere Maoris, and it was on a party of that race coming to Collingwood in May IS6O, and reporting the discovery of gold twenty miles up the Buller, that he, Saunders Rogers, and other fourteen from Collingwood, sailed in the ketch Jane, and arrived at what is now Westport after a two days' passage. They made a trip up the Buller, and succeeeded in doing, at least, one thing—they succeeded in coming safely down again, which is saying a good deal for an experimental trip in a ketch's dingy. They found no gold, as is often the case with men who only give a few hours' trial to the work of searching for it, and they returned to the Buller mouth, to learn

there that some Maoris had brought a nugget from the Waimongoroa, but the party was " anxious to get back to Nelson for a fresh supply of provisions," and they went back. At any rate, Mr Waite did, and he had an excellent opportunity of reflecting upon what he had seen, for, according to the narrative, "the little vessel " that's the Jane—" stood the buffeting of the waves first-rate " —for sixteen days! The discovery of the Otago goldfields " eventuated " just at that time, and this brought to an end, for a couple of years, any hopes of a rush to the Buller, and it brings to an end also Mr Waite's Chapter I. Chapter 11. tells how, in the year ISG2, the steamer Tasmanian Maid, under command of Capt. Whitwell, brought a lot of diggers to the Buller —how more gold was got at " the first diggings " up the Buller, and in the Waimongoroa—and how Mr Waite had another trip as a coasting pilot when he " happened to be onboard" the Gipsy for only thirteen weeks! Then was what a very small West Coast wit has called the period of " muscular Christianity " —the period when men devoted their time to gathering mussels on the beach for the maintenance of themselves and their mates, and were content to drive out the devil of starvation by consuming flour " intended for pigs." This was in October and November, ISG2, and it was soon after that Simon—a Maori without a " tanner"—discovered the Lyell Creek. " About this time"— it is a pity that Mr Waite, among his other distinguishing traits, had not habituated himself to the keeping of a diar\ as well as a dairy—" about this time" men came overland from Canterbury, by way of the Grey; and early in IS<J3 Maoris did the same. Even then there were hopes of the Grey district itself, but the Havelock diggings deluded its thousands, and detained the cutter Thames, which was to enter the trade, and the Gipsy went ashore. Not till July, ISC4, did the steamer Nelson sail for the Grey, with Mr Waite on board, and a week after landing the Maoris produced fifty ounces of gold got in the Greenstone Creek. Others of the pioneers were less successful, and Waite was nearly meeting with the more deserved fate which Bunt did not meet with at Bruce, Bay. lie was, in a mild way, " mobbed," and here we shall let him tell his own story :

The first question put to mo was by the Dutchman. " Veil, what did you corse dis rush vor ?" I answered I did not cause the rush, and that I-was in Nelson to get a small vessel to bring me to the Grey ; that I had called them all together in Nelson, and told them that I was only going prospecting ; that I did not lead them to believe they were going to a goldfield ; but that, according to the letters I had received, I thought there was gold in the country, which I still believed, and that a proper trial would prove it. The next question put to ine was by a Cockney—l am sure he was, for he so murdered the letter h. " Veil, Mr. Vaito. ow wudyou like to cum ore without money, and avo to starve as ve ave to do ?" My answer was, that I did not ask him to come; he had pleased himself. "Veil, Mr Vaite, you seems to treat this ere matter worry lightly, but hi thinks hits no joke to come down ere and spend hall vun's mutiny, and no to git envgold." The aforesaid Dutchman then sjwke up again, and said " Veil, poys, vo vill talc vat ve vants vrom Vate's store, and ve vill hang him aftcrvards.' Just at that moment, an Irishman whispered in my ear the words, *' Cheer up, my boy, don't be frightened; you have more friends than enemies in this crowd." With that, I felt I was safe, but just at that moment a man who had come down to hear what was going ou, one of Mr John Eochi'ort's men, fell down in a fit close to my feet, and that put an end to the meeting. [Mr "Waite might well say that " it's an ill wind that blows nobody good." " Fits" do not always occur so opportunely.] But I was still annoyed by the discontented, and the most of them brought back what provisions they had, with their picks and shovels, tin dishes, &c, and I gave their full value for them.

The purchasers of" tin dishes?, &c.," might well parody a familiar couplet, and instead of " blessing the memory of General Wade," they might bless the memory of generous Waite. Of course everybody now knows that the Grey diggings did not turn out such a "duffer" as the irate Dutchman imagined them to be at the time. The sequel to this trip proved, however, a decided "duffer." The Nelson ueople, it appears, contemplated giving Mr Waite a testimonial in recognition of his pioneering adventures and successes, but, as usual, and like the Dutchmen of Knickerbocker's time, they went from contemplation to sleep, and were more forgetful of Mr "Waite than were the inhabitants of Ilokitika of their satirical censor, Thatcher. Mr Waite scorns the existence of any but self - interested motives in his own case, and, if he had been presented with a testimonial, might, so far as we can judge, have said with Cromwell, " Take away that bauble," but he or his editor cannot help having " a fling" at the Nelson people for their abominable equivocation, and Chapter 11., in words of passionate eloquence, concludes :—"These generous resolves vanished like the upward curling smoke, doomed to melt into thinuer air. So much for the brittle promises of man—promises unsought, unasked for." Alas, curling smoke, that you should be so " doomed to melt!" Alas for man, and the brittleness of pie-crust and promises ! 0 Metaphor ! O Reuben ! " Ilokitika—The Great RushFinal Development—and Conclusion" —that is, not of Ilokitika, hut of Mr Waite's narrative, form Chapters 111. and IV., and to these we may refer again.