THE DARK SIDE OF THE OTAGO DIGGINGS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume II, Issue 99, 9 April 1864, Page 3

THE DARK SIDE OF THE OTAGO DIGGINGS.

(From the Nehon Colonist.) A person who left Nelson nearly a couple of years ago to go to the Otaj;o diggings, has lately returned to this Province, having left Dunedin about four weeks since. He gives sad accounts of the sufferings undergone on the diggings, and of the great amount of unemployed labor which is to be found in the streets of Dunedin. He was about eighteen months on several of the goldfields, but did ** no good," as he termed it, and was only one of very many thousands who were in a similar condition, and was but too glad to get home with his legs saved; for there was a consultation as to whether or not they should both be cut off on account of scurvy. Fortunately he retained them and recovered. The winter on the Otago diggings he describes as something frightful. One party he knew, who, as many others did, attempted to winter on the diggings, were snowed up in their tent for nine entire days, and none of them could get without the canvas walls during all that time. "There was heavy snow even in the height of summer. At Christmas there was four feet of snow where I was working, and if you went to any of the higher ranges you got up to the neck in the snow. There is not a stick of timber, and all we had to kindle a fire in the coldest times was a little small scrub, difficult to be got, and very poor when it was got. But as soon as you had boiled your billy of tea at night, the fire was carefully put out; and if you wanted to warm yourself after that, you could only do so by taking a sharp run, or doing a bit of hard wofk by walking fast when you were already tired enough." Thousands, he believed, have died from scurvy and dysentery, and hundred* more of starvation, and many of whose fate no one knew anything. Two of the mates of this man died, one on each side of him, of dysentery. •« We hear," said the narrator, who is a steady, honest man, " a great deal about a few lucky diggers, of large finds, but nothing of the misery and wretchedness which the great majority of the diggers undergo. How can it be otherwise, sir ?" he said, " There are from 35,000 to 40,000 men on the diggings, or were that number not long ago; and the gold returns are only 18,000 to 20,000 ounces a fortnight, and often not that. I fully believe that the men, taken altogether, do not

average per head, a quarter of an ounce per week, and as an immense number get nothing at all you may judge how miserable they must be, and how many of the storekeepers who trust them are not paid. Oh, yes, many storekeepers have been ruined on the goldfields. That Dunstau has done for many of them, and not a few of them were wealthy when they began. But they gave credit largely, and were let in. Great numbers of the men never made their * tucker,' and of course they could not pay what they hadn't got. " No, the Taieri rush was no good ; it was made far too much of. There was no doubt some good gold there, but it was all found in such a very small space that only a few got in, while thousands could not get a foot of the ground. Those who got claims on the good ground did very well, but the rest did nothing, although hundreds and thousands prospected in what looked like the most inaccessible places. Either the diggings are very good or next to nothing at all. When there are about 30,000 men digging here and there, if you are not on the spot at the time of a new ' rush,' in order to get the first of the rush, it's no good, you've got no chance. The gullies are of no extent, and every foot of ground is taken up. There is no mistake there is plenty of gold in the Hogburn, but God only knows when it will go down. You might sit there waiting for it to fall until you starve. Turn it? >io, you can never turn it. It comes down within a few hours and rises QOfeet. It one night did that. Our tent was far above the river, and about thirty or forty feet above a ledge of rock which was a long way above the level of the water. Before morning the water was into our tent. The soil is so loose that you cannot drive or tunnel. " No, there are simply no roads at all to these diggings. You must find a track the best way you can. You see how others go, and follow the line they take. But there is no heavy timbered bush to go through like we had in Nelson. You can't conceive the wretchedness of great numbers. Many died off like sheep. No, the Otago papers say nothing about all this, and the diggers don't believe what the papers do say about the goldfields, for they know—none better—that they print the awfullest lies; and the prospectors are as bad. One of theee chaps once got up a rush, saying he had a pennyweight to the dish. Thousands started off for it, and we found no gold, not even the color, and this fellow who

got it up did not even bottom his hole, though he said he had got a pennyweight, and this showed how he lied. We were going to string that chap up, for it's a dangerous thing to delude some thousands of diggers, eager for gold and up for tucker. They would think nothing of hanging a man there for doing this. He begged and prayed for his life so hard that he was let off with a tremendous thrashing. Yes, its quite true that hundreds of men on the road to and from the diggings were utterly penniless, and were obliged to I sleep outside under the rocks or anywhere I near the accommodation houses on the way, because they had no money to pay for either their supper or a bed. Poverty is no disgrace, though a great ill-convenience, and I have had to feel that same myself. The destitution and prostitution of Otago is excessive. Diggers come down in thousands to the town in the hope that they may find work to raise their passage money. Many do raise it, but many don't and never will, because it is not easy to get work. They are still leaving, and everyone says he only wants to get as much as will take him away. The day I left there were about 400 came down the river in two steamers from Dunedin to Port Chalmers, to go on board the ship that was to leave that day. They were taking them away to Melbourne at 40s. a head, and the passage is about six days. No more diggers are arriving in Otago, but there are still people coming there from Scotland, and God knows what they are to do. The last cargo of girls that came out was a terrible affair. A few of them might get a few weeks in a public-house as barmaids or the like, but a great many had to go on the streets. It was a shame to bring them out. 1 hey were not wanted as wives for the diggers. A digger don't want a wife. He is here to-day and gone to-morrow, and when he puts on his hat his house is covered, and he camps where he pleases. Bad as Otago is, everybody there feels it will be worse yet. The place is crammed full of things of all kinds, and horses, for instance, that not many months ago were worth £IOO or £l2O may now be bought at £l7 or £18." The foregoing is the gist of the narrative of a digger who has had somewhat bitter experience of the Otago diggings, and who returned to Nelson a much poorer man than he left it. His statements were made without any exaggeration of tone or manner, and he said he could not describe a fiftieth part of the misery he saw. He returned to Nelson to look after his wife and children, and his last remark in the conversation above narrated was, that notwithstanding all he had seen and suffered, had he not been a married man with a family to look after, he would go to the diggings again!