WHO FIRST FOUND GOLD?

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22509, 17 September 1938, Page 21

WHO FIRST FOUND GOLD?

ACCORDING to the Mines, Statement of 1885, ; issued ] under the auspices of the Hon. W. J. M. Larnach, who was Minister for Mines in the' Stout-Vogel Government, the Maoris: in preEuropean days were well aware of the existence of gold in New Zealand. There it is recorded that a Southland chief, long before Gabriel Read's discovery in 1861, had said there was "plenty whiro" (the native word for gold), in Central Otago, and it is a matter of historical fact that later, when they had; learned something of its importance, Maoris were among the earliest prospectors. I have heard the late Sir Frederick Chapman if late that gold was found by Europeans in Otago as far back as 1832, and we have it on the authority of Mr James Mackay that a surveyor's chainman discovered a nugget of gold "about the size of a French bean" in the bed of the Aorere river. Collingwood, in 1843.

(SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOB THI FUBI.) "_. [By KAUM^TUA.] parcel arid brought them to a jeweller in San Francisco,; who told him they-were pure gold! In a little time men were .gathering .on* the new goldfield from every quarter of the globe. William Hammond Hargreaves, an Englishman who had' cbme'from Australia, was so impressed by the similarity of the gold-bearing gravel in California to that which he had seen in the' valley of the Turor river in New South 'Wales, that he hastened back, to Sydney, interviewed the authorities, whom he informed that he would found a goldfield, and in' February. 1851, he-was able to announce the discovery of payable gold at Fish Creek, ah affluent of the Tuson. So began the Australian goldfields. - Here it should be mentioned that as far back as 1844, Count an Austrian traveller arid scientist, who had visited Australia, sent-some samples of rock he had obtained from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales to Sir Roderick Murchison, the famous geologist, who had been commissioned some years earlier by the Tsar of Russia to report on the. mineral potentialities of the Ural Mountains. After"he. had examined the samples, Sir Roderick was confident that gold, existed In Australia. So; convinced was he that he endeavoured, though unsuccessfully, to induce parties of Cornish miners to emigrate to Australia. He lived to see his confidence justified when seven, years later Hargreaves' discovery brought the island continent into prominence ■ equally with California.

It is a curious fact that, not merely in New Zealand, but in California and Australia, scientific knowledge had little to do with the earliest discoveries of gold. The Californian .goldfields were probably the richest and most extensive of which we have historical knowledge. Yet gold was discovered in California accidentally and by a man who could not recognise the precious metal when he had found it! Early in 1848, not long after California had become territory of the United States, a man who had been excavating on a hillside in the Sacramento Valley for the purpose of erecting a sawmill, made a small drain on the lower side of the depression he had dug to allow accumulated water to run off. Presently he noticed particles of a yellowish substance in the drain-bed. Finding that he could not break them with his teeth, he concluded that they were not fragments of rock. He collected them in a small

The two brothers Ring, who found gold at Coromandel, in the Province of Auckland, in 1852, had been goldseekers in California, but it does not appear "that they came to this country as prospectors, indeed, it can hardly be. said that alluvial gold exists, in the -North Island, and certainly the: find at Coromandel was in a geological formation totally different from that

Early Days on the West Goast

(To be Continued.)

of ■ Calif ornia. The development of their discovery was prevented at the time owing to the hostile attitude of the natives, who resented the intrusion of strangers into-their territories. , At Collingwood - The first really important,.gold, discovery in New Zealand -was at Lightband's Gully, Collingwood, in October, 1856. The gold was coarse, often "nuggety," 'and easily won by the primitive methods in vogue in those far-off days. The discovery gave* the Nelson settlement its first" breath of real prosperity: The" goldseekers at Collingwood" included a p.oportion of Maoris, and, as they were well acquainted .with" the West Coast, they- remarked,, that similar "wash" existed as we shall see later, they were not slow to utilise, their knowledge. That gold existed- on the ;West Coast -was established-in 1857. -In March of that year the brothers Oakes sailed from Xyttelton in the schooner Emerald Isle, on a: voyage of exploration in that then,,little known region. They went by way of the East Coast and Foveaux Strait, and they landed at various points, notably at the mouths of the Haast," Hokitika, Teremakau, and Grey rivers, i and they went up the Grey as far as the Brunner Gorge. They obtained several ounces- of gold, apparently in the locality of the Hokitika and Teremakau rivers, but though the expedition received full publicity on its return, there appears to have been little if any public interest'. * Messrs Harper and Lockett, the first white men to cross the Southern Alps from Canterbury, accomplished the feat later in the same year, and they reported having obtained "several fine specimens** of gold, but again the news does not appear to have attracted' unusual attention. ' It is beyond doubt, however, that gold .was found on the. West Coast in 1857, first by, the brothers Oakes and then by Messrs Harper and Lockett. . .