HOW TO GET UP A BUSH.

Southland Times, Issue 1153, 25 October 1869, Page 3

HOW TO GET UP A BUSH.

The following story was recently related by a correspondent in one of the Hokitika journals : —

" A good crop of smart sharebrokers is worth a hundred reefs for getting up a rush. I was in the sharebroking business myself in a neighboring province. A sharebroker, who died in Bendigo, bequeathed me five specimens, stating in his will that, put to honest use, they were worth more than the Kohinoor. As soon as I got the specimens I came to New Zealand and showed them to several parties on a gold field, and got up a mania in no time. Of course, sharebrokers came up to see what was to be done. One of these gentlemen, whose name I don't know, asked one day if I had got any stone out of my reef. I said I bad knocked off a few pieces from a leader, and showed him the specimens. He immediately grasped my hand, and fairly shaking with excitement, said, ' My boy, the best pieces of quartz in the Australian Colonies. To my knowledge, with their aid, thirty-seven companies in Victoria, fourteen in New South Wales, and seventeen in Queensland, besides others I have heard of, have been got up. It is just fifteen years since I saw them first in Bendigo. What will you take for them?' I replied that I <£idn'fc care about parting with them. My friend sighed deeply, and, as he turned away to hide a falling tear, remarked in broken accents, 'I have been looking after these specimens five years ; the last I heard of them was near Port Curtis.' A few weeks after this I deemed it advisable to leave the place, not on account of the reef dipping considerably, and the inability of the miners working in the shaft to find where it commenced to dip, but because I wished to visit a friend in Victoria. I then sold the specimens to the gentleman who coveted them. He remarked, as we parted, ' I'm going to make a pile up North.' He went to Auckland. Three weeks after he landed there a rush set in."