NOTES FROM A BACK GULLY.

Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 298, 6 November 1886, Page 2

NOTES FROM A BACK GULLY.

[by korari.] Piccolo Charlie. Among the many characters of the early West Coast days was •' Piccolo Charlie " 44 better kenned than respectit" as the Scotch say. He was a curious compound of humanity was *' Piccolo.'* J had him frequently with me on works both on the West Coast and in Canterbury, and when he was sober he was very good company ; for confirmed loafer as he was, he still had some remains ot better feelings about him, and one of his peculiarities was that he never used bad language. He had been educated at St. Omer in France for a clergyman, but gradually descended in the social scale till he became the hardest case in the Colony. He came to Hokitika as leader of a baud on a salary of £l6 per week; he didn't keep that long, but very soon played himself all over the Coast with his flute, on which he was a perfect artist, travelling from one public house to another, and from township to township till I think he must have visited every hotel on the Coast. He would sometimes carry some paints and brushes with him and paint signboards when a pint of beer was not procurable otherwise: but times had to be very bad indeed before Charlie would tackle work. He did about ten weeks with me once. It was during a very severe winter; and when he came he had only a thin ragged shirt and trousers on: no blankets, tent or decent boots even. However, we managed to fix him up aud when he left he had .£l4 to draw. I tried to keep this for him till we got to the township, but there were six pubs to pass in about five miles. He got by three of them, but the fourth brought him up and I had to give him his money. Two days afterwards he came into town, with the same old rags, the piccolo and empty pockets, but still as happy as ever- I did not set eyes on him for some years 'til one day in Christchureh the familiar strains of Charlie's piccolo ! sounded in my ears and looking round I saw my old acquaintance at his favourite occupation playing for a pint. I went up to him and after borrowing a shilling and shouting he said he would like to go up country to work for me. So I gave him a railway pass, as I knew money would be no good, and started him to a railway contract to do some painting for mo. When I went back to the camp a weak afterwards my partner asked what the dickens I meant sending up a man like that for to work, and said he had started him off at once. This partner of mint) had no soul for music. However after a while Charlie turned up again and I had hi"? with me for some months with intervals of sprees. Duriug that time he showed me letters he had from a legal firm informing him that his father ha i died and left a large fortune to him, and enclosed a draft for .£SOO to pay his expenses home I felt very glad and congratulated him. He said, " Don't you tell any of the boys of this; I am going to send this money back, I have only one sister in the world and she is very well connected, and if I went home I would only be a disgrace to her, I am past redemption and it's no good me trying ever to be a gentleman aerain." I tried to reason with him but to no purpose. lie kept to his intention and for some years after I frequently saw him, and he was always the same happy drunken Bohemian. I have, since I left the south, he'ird I that he is dead : And lie was one of the

colonial education is to a man. A Pcrisher. Perhaps my readers in the sett'ed and civilised districts are not aware what a '* perUher " is. Any old digger can tell you, but 1 question if the word is defined in any dictionary with any pretentions to a knowledge of mining phraseology. I may say that I have never come across the term in any work on philology. Professor Max Mueller does not mention it at any rate. The word has been used ever since I first knew the Coast (and that is a long time ago) to denote an individual who has descended so low in the social scale that he had come to be looked upon as a sort of professional loafer. His method of living was a mystery to his acquaintances, for friends he had none. He was never known to work, he never by any chance got more than three miles from a pub ; he was never out of the way when anybody was " shoutinghe always had a plausible yarn on which to rise a pint; and he had a sort of inspiration by which he could divine when a drink was to be got on the cheap. An individual with all these characteristics is in my mind's eye just at present; in fact I can hear his melodious voice. He has been educated well, his father was mayor of an important English shipping tov.n he has in his time had pile claims, and he now in his comparatively sober moments admits that when drunk, forgetfulness begets happiness, an.l sobriety,— misery. How the man lives, no ono knows; he does not purchase any eatables, and no one will credit liim, he occasionally drops in accidentally when dinner is on and gets a feed that way, but, as a rule he seems to live by suction. Occasionally he does a fossick and as soon as he raises a few colours he converts it into malt liquor and thereby attains the height of his ambition. If by a lucky chance his prospecting didi contains u penny weight or two he is open-hearted with it, and all the neighbourhood is invited to drink his health : Of course this is his way of casting bread on the waters, for he knows it will bring forth a hundred fold in due course. He, like many others was longed for in the house of his ancestors, and .£3OO was seat out to make him decent and land him in England " but he never got more than a dozen miles from our back gully ; and as ho could not get rid of the remittance fast enough in the little one horse township he went to, he employed a man at a pound a day to help him to spend it. Years afterwards when another of our back gully men went home, and took a letter of introduction from the professional perisher to his brother, who is a well to do tradesman ; the messenger called at the well appointed residence in a fashionable quarter of the city, presented his credentials to the superb footman and after an interval the slavey returned and shut the door in the gully face. Now this messenger was a really respectable, well informed and presentable individual, but he acknowledged he never got such a knock in his life. However, when our professional received the information he merely remarked " Never mind, Missis, I suppose you can stand a pint for the disappointment," and that ended any chance of the perisher posing as a returned prodigal. The Grey Coal Fields. The coal mines of the Grey and Buller Rivers are now important industries. In the early days of the Coast the Grey mines were very small potatoes, and the Buller was only kuown as a probability. I have some very lively recollections of the Brunner mine in its infancy ; under the management of old Batty and liis partners. (The old boy is just as jolly and amenable to a half pint as ever he was.) The first means of transit for the coal from the mine to the port was by means of a "dugout" canoe which carried a little over two tons; then a great stride was made when a boat capable of carrying five tons nominal was built. I say nominal advisedly, as from considerable pergonal experience experience gained m the trade I am aware that a ton at the Brunner mine only weighed 17cwt. by a properly adjusted weighing machine. Of this singular difference in the standard more hereafter. Batty and Co. only had a sort of prospecting lease of the mine ! from the Nelson Government. As it was ! likely to prove a valuable property, owing to the gold rush this supient Government, through the tlieu Superintendent, Mr Alfred Sanders, (who has lately been giving a very incorrect account of his experience in reference to the Burgess gang of murderers in the Canterbury papers,) j considered it desirable for the welfare of the public that the mine should be leased to a company with a back-bone, who would work it scientifically, lay a railway ro the port and do great things generally. So liatty and Co. received notice to quit. They didn't see it: they had opened mine at considerable expense before there j was any talk of gold in the Grey valley ; i they had erected buildings, done a lot of i preliminary work, and were making | money fast, as even at the high price j they sold their coal there was an un- | limited demand, for freights were high, j and the fact ot a steamer being able to ; replenish her bunkers at Greymouth was | big item, for freights ranged from <£o l J per ton from Nelson to as high as .£23 ;! from Duuedin in one instance. So tho s j lessees rather preferred to enjoy the I | benefit of their enterprise themselves than II to allow interlopers to step m and reap ■ ! the harvest. But tiie Provincial Govern- • i ment were stubborn in the matter, and > | closed a bargain, which was a very loose j i one ,by the way, with a Victorian firm, and > j Batty an 1 Co. were offered a very in--i | adequate compensation to clear out, and - . make room tor their successors ; this they 1 very dcvidedlv refused to do, and a writ ? ot ejecmciit or some such no lice was

sewed on theni, with no effect. Then ft bailill and a couple of policemen were sent up, and two of the parishers, both Yankees, with the miners to the number ot '2O barricaded themselves inside the main drive, with provisions, refreshments of various descriptions, an old gun and pistol or two, in fact all preparations for a prolonged siege. The position was practically impregnable, for the entrance was only about seven feet by five, and although those inside could see anyone at the entrance a visitor's eyes could not penetrate the Stygian gloom within where it was as dark as the inside of a cow. Moreover when the bobbies ventured to approach the mouth qf the tunnel they were ordered by a Stentorian voice to " git out o l ' tliar," and a hint in the form of a few knobs of coal which came Bailing through the murky atmosphere and an occasional blank cartridge added emphasis to the advice from within. Then Mr Kynnersley, who had been recently appointed, made up his mind that something must be done, so he got together all the police and specials he could lay his hands on to the number of seventeen and proceeded to invest the fortress. Batty and Co. had a store and hotel at the coal wharf at Cobden, and when we heard the news George Norman who was the managing partner and another took a small Maori Canoe and started up river that night so as to forestall the invaders. A council of war was held and a plan decided upon when the Commissioner and his men arrived, he summoned the besieged to surrender. Norman was outside and demanded fair compensation; this was promised, then a guarantee that no proceedings should be taken against any of the men for resisting the law, this was also agreed to, "Then" said Norman, " here is the key " and as one of the new lessees held out his hand to take it, Norman threw it half way over the river and told him he could take it from there. This ended the battle but the two partners who had acted as leaders inside the mine were cited to appear to answer for their delinquencies and were sentenced to a month each. I strongly objected to this, and the Superintendent happening to arrive the same day they were locked up, the sentence was not altered in the books, but the rebels were allowed to go at large on condition they reported themselves to the jailer at nine p.m. every evening for a month. This they did religiously, if not punctually, and usually brought a drop of something with them to show no animosity. B:itty and Co. received about a quarter of what they were justly entitled to as compensation, and the Victorian company went to work in exactly the same method, and after a couple of years they were also incontinently turned out, and the Government turned coal merchants themselves for a few years till the present lessees Messers Kennedy Bros, obtained their lease.

(Continuation of News, see 4th Page.)