A DIGGER’S LAMENT ON THE WAKAMARINA.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume V, Issue 253, 17 April 1865, Page 3

A DIGGER’S LAMENT ON THE WAKAMARINA.

(From the Nelson Colonist, March 28.) A Friend lately from the Wakamarina, has left With us a Digger’s Note Book, in which, in addition to keeping his accounts, the owner has from time to time given vent to his feelings by engrossing them in the spare leavespf his small ledger. ° Under the title “ Brawn from ’Nature,” is the following : The rain is falling, the mist, is fast gathering down on the mountain—the forerunners of jecfed misery and blighted hopes. On the banks of the doomed Wakamarina stands the sturdy but ill-clad digger with deep furrows of despair thickly imprinted on his dark brow. Beneath him lie all Ins hopes, all his earthly fortune in decay and ruin. Amidst havoc and desolation are all the remains of months of incessant toil and slavery. Now, human nature, stand aloof and see all! See yonder dark man plotting and scheming fora scantv subsistence to satisfy the cravings of nature. All ] gold, what for thee will not man attempt? To what degradation will lie not submit ? For thee whst will he not risk in this life, and, prospectively, in the next ? fndus'ry is rewarded by thee, enterprise is supported by thee, and heaveu’itself is bartered for thee, thou powerful auxiliary of the devil! One tempter was not enough for the fall of man, but thou wert added that he never might rise again. On another page appears the subjoined notes : Woe to the man whose claim has turned out a duffer, and who has no money. His clothes are worn out, and he has nothing to eat; his credit is gone, and he has no friends; the wild bush is nis habitation, the rocks his shelter, and the uninhabited hills his only associates ; but. There is a land of pure delight. Where saints immortal reign; Infinite day excludes the night. And pleasures banish pain. The writer’s name appears on the book; and the friend who found it informs us that although for months a most unlucky and wretched digger on the Wakamarina, whore for six months he scarcely obtained a single ounce, the writer of these lamentattons is now, as the phrase is, “• making his pile,” at the rate of £5 a day on the Ukitiki, and is one of the fortunates among the thousands’ who are now crowding the Okitiki ground on the West Coast.