DOUGHTOWN SCRIP. A New Zealand Mining Experience.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 70, 4 October 1884, Page 5

DOUGHTOWN SCRIP. A New Zealand Mining Experience.

[By Akciitiuld Fokbks in tho "English Illustratod Magazine."]

Perhaps I ought to begin by mentioning that this is not a " City Article" Nor am I either a broker or a jobber, although I do propound the question— "Does any reader ardently burn to possess himself of some Doughtown scrip ? If so, lam prepared to supply a considerable parcel of the same. It behoves me to explain, first, what "Doughtown scrip" is, and secondly, how I came to be a holder of it. It is necessary to begin by being geographical. Nearly the whole of the west coast of the Middle Island of Now Zealand is auriferous. Fifteen years ago the diggings thero wero perhaps the richest in the world. It seemed as if you could hardly go wrong. A ship's boat disembarked you on the black sand of the sea-shore. You need have gone no further, but simply have shovelled theblack sand into your dish, washed in the seawater, and lo ! there uas a rich golden residuum. Ten thousand diggers— you could not call them miners— were delving in the black sand of a long strip of beach sixty miles south of Hokitika. On the low ridge behind the sand was a long row of canvas drinking-shops and canvas dancehouses. It was the same on the beach between Hokitika and Grey mouth. Inland for miles the valleys of every creek swarmed with toiling diggers. Hokitika to-day moulders along with a population of some 2,000 souls, and a digger on the " bend " in its quiet decorous public-houses would be regarded as a strange curiosity. Fifteen or sixteen years ago there was gathered in and about it a population of some 30,000 able-bodied adults, with no thought in any mind but of gold. Teeming steamers arrived twice a week from Melbourne, and discharged their living cargoes to increase the busy, light-hearted throng. These were the halcyon days of " the Speckled Hen," the " Murrumbidgee Barge,' 1 "Topping Annie," and other gay allegorical persons of light heart and lighter manners, who looked scornfully at little nuggets, and thought poorly of the economist who called fora single bottle of champagne after a couple of circuits in the waltz's giddy maze. The region had something amazingly like a civil war all to itself, when a small army of gentlemen of the Irish persuasion broke open the gates of the cemetery, and when a serried battalion of six hundred Scotch Highland miners marched into the town with pick handle on each brawny shoulder, and in a quiet business-like fashion tendered their services to the warden, "to drive the Fenians into the sea.' 5 A strong, wise, masterfully discreet man, Mr Bonner, ruled the storm and assuaged it, but not until he ;l; l had locked up a revolutionary priest, and i ? exercised martial law carried out at the \ 1 pistol muzzle by Volunteers who had rallied * to his support. It was a great triumph for I ( him to be able to decline the offer the ' £ the colonial Government made him of a '• € battalion of regulars to help him keep the € peace. He knew the men he had to deal with, and to have had the soldiers would * have been to draw the sword and throw t away the scabbard. *5 Gold-mining is still an industry of this c^ remote, isolated coast-line. But there is hardly any "surface" work now. A " rush " occurs occasionally, but it is a very mild "rush," with no feature of the old buoyant, reckless, wicked rushes. " Kentuck, " after a brief acquaintance with the " Luck " for whom and with whom he died with so tender a manhood, knew more about baby-ways than the mass of the New Zealand miners of the old days. A decent woman in a mining camp was a phenomenon in petticoats. Now goldmining is a settled industry. The miner is married, has a wonderful genius for a large small family, and, as like as not, owns his cottage. When he migrates to a new rush, he takes his life belongings with him. The track through the tree-stumps among which are dotted about the tents and the shingle hut?, swarms with children. There is a school in gear before the temporary settlement is a fortnight old. Mrs Miner brings her man his dinner in a basin out to the hole in which he is at work, or sends it by one of the bairns ; when he drops work for the day he cames home to the domestic tea, and to his own fireside if it be winter time— to the family mosquitoes in the summer. There is no dance-house now on all the west coast. "The Speckled Hen" as the wife of a mining manager, is the " leader of Society " in an outlying mining township. " Topping Annie " is the sedate widow of a local government functionary, and has the reputation of devoutness and considerable wealth. Altogether the region has long since ranged itself , abjured sack— l won't say whisky— and taken to live in a cleanly decorous fashion. I suppose that this "Westland," as the province is called, is the most universally gold-impregnated region in the world. You may "wash" anywhere you please within ten or twelve miles of the sea, andyouwill not fail to get " colour," only the proportion of gold to solid is not everywere sufficient to make gold getting profitable ; nor is an adequate supply of water uniformly procurable. But there is gold everywhere. The region is overlooked by Mount Cook, a huge snow-capped mountain some 17,000 feet high. A soaring genius proposed to assail Mount Cook bodily on the hydraulic principle, by directing on it vast compressed jets of water raised from out old Ocean's bed. He had not yet carried out his neat little project ; but if he ever does he will have locally stolen a march on the day specified by prophecy as that on which the mountain tops shall be overwhelmed in the great deep. But although Mount Cook stands yet scatheless, the jet of water from the nozzle of the gold-miner's simple hydraulic apparatus is eating shrewdly into banks and ridges of a more humble altitude. The process is simple enough. The water must be plenteously forthcoming. The stream from the nozzle of a huge hose is directed dead on the auriferous "face." Everything comes away under the remorseless play of this fierce douche — soil, boulders, the spreading root-stools of felled trees. The chaotic torrent rushes downward, along a compressed channel, in the bottom of which are the long narrow boxes wherein the particles of gold fall and lie, partly because of their weight, partly because intercepted by roughnesses and holes that act as traps. Some of these hydraulic enterprises are on a large scale, and pay steady and increasing dividends. It was not as a gold-miner that I visited Westland in a recent March— that is the autumn season in New Zealand— but as a lecturer. With all its roughness, there is hardly any more intelligent chance aggregation of humanity in the world than a gold-mining community. It is sure to possess in its curious mixture that would perhaps be more accurately defined as a jumble, an exceptional number oi educated men who retain their taste for reading. Out of the world by force of their conditions, gold-miners retain a keen interest in the world, especially the world of action. They follow the story of a campaign with

engrossed interest. They take sidos while Britain is not in the arena ; in that case they are all on one side with a grand fervour. They stand with Chard and Bromhead inside* tho frail stronghold of Rorke's Drift and in fancy, with flushed faces and sparkling eyes, they charge home with tho big troopers at Kassassin. It was, as I supposo, because the plain, blunt stories I tried to tell on tho lecturing platiorm wore tales of campaign and battle- iield that they sent to toll me thoy wanted me to go among them. The mossage camo to me at Christchurch just as I was making ready to mako a reluctant departure from beautiful, hospitable New Zealand I took it as among the best compliments that ever had been paid me, and postponing my departure, proceeded to obey the summons. Then came the question how to get from Christchurch to Westland. Christchurch is close to the east coast of the island, the capital of the province of Canterbury, the most fertile and the most socially charming region of all New Zealand. Westland lies on the opposite coast of the same island. But between the inhabitated portions of the two provinces thore stretches a lofty range of rugged, precipitous mountains, with t>nowcovered summits and glacier-clad sides. Through the ravines of these there has been made a road, compared with which, in dizzy boldness of engineering, any road-making of which I have had experience, whether in the Alps, the Carpathians, the Balkans, or the Himalayas, is tame and prosaic. A coach traverses this road three times a week. On this coach I booked myself for a box-seat. My Christchurch friends cheerfully asked me where my will was, in case of accidents, warned me to sit tight, and if I got nervous to shut my oyes ; and away I went by train across the fertile Canterbury plains to Springfield, the village at the foot of the mountains whero the railway ends and the coach begins. It was a staring red vehiclo— was the coach — hung in tho American plan on long leather bands from front to rear. The team consisted of a pair of wheelers, and three leaders harnessed abreast. The coachman was a auiet self-contained man, a friendly companion, and apparently not bothered with any nerves. It was a pleasant ride until the gloaming. There had been awkward descents done at a hand-gallop, that suggested unpleapant speculations as to the vehicle's, not to say^ the passengers' ultimate destination if a wheel should come off. But there had been nothing very trying, and much that had been very beautiful. The gaunt mountain tops all around, the lovely lakes clown in the basins, whose deep blue waters we had skirted ; the long pale green stretches of upland ; the romantic wooded valleys into which we had plunged so abruptly and emerged with equal abruptness ; the cheery wayside taverns, lonely in the midst of the solitude, whose succulent mountain mutton we had eaten with appetite whetted by the pure keen mountain air— all went to make up an exceptionally pleasant and indeed memorable experience. We had lost time somewhere, and the short southern gloaming was about us, when the driver quietly muttered, as we turned sharp round a corner, "I don't like the Waimakariri gorge after sundown." It is with every emphasis that I record my assent to this expression ; and yet when it was all over, I was not sorry that the experience had befallen us. We went at a hand gallop on a track just wide enough and no more, for our three leaders abreast. About five hundred feet sheer below — sheer except in places where the cruel, jagged crags reared their horrid heads— roared and boiled the furious torrent of the Waimakariri River. One could just discern through tbe gathering gloom the deep blackness of sullen gloomy pool alternating with the dingy white of the tortured rapids writhing their vexed course through the rocks that impeded the riverbed. Above us towered a beetling crag-wall as high, where the eye could catch its &ky-line, as the drop on the side next the river was deep. But this was only in places ; for the most part it actually overhung us, and the narrow road was notched out of its looming face. It overhung worst ax, the sharp bends of the road, as it followed the curves, the projections, and the indentations of that serrated precipice. Not once, but often, the leaders as they galloped round a turn i were clean out of our sight, and there was but the point of the pole projecting over the profound, ere as yet the wheelers, urged close to the verge that the wheels might clear the projecting buttress, complied with the sharp bend, borne round on their haunches by the driver's strong left arm. His attention was concentrated on his work, but once he spoke, and I would rather he had held his tongue. "Do you see those dim white specks on the flat top of that crag below us? Those are the bleached bones of some horses. They were pasturing on the upland above us, when a sudden scare sent them oyer the precipice. They fell clear outside the road without touching it, and brought up where you see their bones down there." It was full dark ere we got through the gorge. Then the moon rose as we galloped across the upland flat, and drew up in front of "The Bealey" Hotel, the half-way house. ' ' The Bealey "is a sort of hospice several thousand feet above the sea level. All around it hang the everlasting glaciers. From their smooth, cruel, cold blue faces, we saw the moonbeams refracted inhospitably. But there was no inhospitality inside "The Bealey." A great log fire blazed in the ample chimney of the oldfashioned panelled parlour, and how good was that juicy slice of mountain mutton eaten with the great floury potatoes ! The landlord gave me a posy of edelweiss that he had culled the same day on the glacier edge behind the house; he had tried the plant i 1 his garden, but it would not thrive. The thin ice was on the bath-tub next morning, and it was cruel cold when, long before sun-up, the coach renewed its journey. A long heavy stage in the shingle bed of the Bealey river, where we saw the wreck of a coach that had been caught in a freshet and whirled down a few miles ere it had brought up, led to a steep climb on to a bare saddle whose summit was the highest point of the journey. Then followed the abrupt, tortuous descent into the dismal Gehenna of the Otara gorge. I remember nothing so weird. Whatever lay before us beyond the summit of the saddle lay unrevealed and mysterious in a veil of dense white mist. Into this vagueness we plunged at a gallop, whirling with startlingly sharp twists down a steep zigzag. From out the hidden mist wrapped depths rose an ominous roaring turmoil. There were fleeting glimpses of sheer precipice, its lip just grazed by the coach -wheels. Down and yet down, till in a sudden wheel, one looked dizzily over the edge ta see white water tearing and struggling far below. Then cataracts dashed from the rocks above us sheer down into the water below us, leaving road and the wayfarers on it dry behind their feathery spray that sparkled in the early sun which was fighting with the fog. Stretches of road down in the gorge here were laid on tree trunks that bridged the spaces from projection to projection. Places were worn to a slant by the torrents that battled and foamed their way across the track, and here and there the outer edge of the road crumbled and gave under tjie coach wheels. One final sharp wriggle, we had darted across a wooden bridge hanging

above the foaming torrent, and then the Otara gorge was behind us, and we were pulling up outside the lonely broakfast house. We were in Westland. A few miles further, and we were in the " twelve mile avenue." Surely there is no avenue under tho sun to compare with this wondrous natural arcade ! High ovorhoad the tall pines interlaco their dark groen branches, their sombro stiffness divorsiiied by the tenderer tint of beech leaves, and by the long graceful pendulous sprays ot the weeping birches. This is the roof of this glorious aisle of Nature's cathedral ; but of it, and of the sunlight struggling down through it, you catch mere glimpses. For the aisle has a lower roofing of green lace. The avenue is lined by the boles of treeferns, up whose brown bark the delicate ivy and the flowering creepers twine ; and the arching fern fronds, springing gracefully in wide curves from each stem-top, meet and interweave droopingly overhead. In this fairy avenue it is always cool and shady. There is ever the sound of lazily dripping water from some hidden rill percolating through tho lavish tangled undergrowth. The greenory oppresses you with no sense of monotony ; for clambering out on every branch, and clinging to every frond stem, the creeping rata expands its wild wealth of crimson blossoms. If thore be a break in the avenue for an instant, there is a glimpse of the mountain face opposite, its lower slopes hazily purple with the flush of rhododendron blossom ; higher up, the cold blue glacier, and above every tiling, towering into the azure sky, tho fantastic snowy peaks. This avenue is simply a dream of beauty twelve miles long. Were there no pink terraces in New Zealand, were there no Sydney Harbour, with its lovely picturesque indentations, were there no Mount Macedon in Victoria, no Uluo Mountains in New South Wales, no Mount Lofty in South Australia, no Hawkesbury, no Fitzroy, no water-sheen from Rangitoto, no Sounds between Nelson and Picton more picturesque than any Norwegian fjord, were there no more scrap of scenery in all the Australasias, the soft mystic beauty of this avenue would repay the pains of a journey across the world. But it is not yet — at the end of the "twelve miles avenue " where Poughtown is to be found. Emerging from the avonue the coach lias to ford the Takamakow River. Even in the quietest time this is no easy feat, for the boulders in the river bod are big and shifting, and the deep current flows swiftly. This river comes down in the most strangely sudden freshlets. It is told of a flock of sheep tlu?t it was driven fnvn C^nterbury to Westland without crowing tho Takamakow. That happened thus. At night the shepherd drove his flock across an old dry bed of the stream on to a grassy patch that had once been an island. There was rain during the night up in the mountains. In the morning when tho chepherd went on with intent to ford the i iver, he found no river to ford, only a bed in which some pools still lingered. While he slept the river had come down in flood, and carved its way back into the old bed ! From the Takamakow the coach whirls on through the Kumnra mining township, and beyond through others till it reaches its destination, in moist, quiet, sleepy Hokitika. The day after a lecture night in Hokitika, on which occasion necessity compelled the use of a " property " monument as a reading desk, the cover of which of course fell oft' at the most enthralling passage, and disclosed, amid the cheers of the audience, an inscription which described the monument as " sacred to the memory of the sainted Maria," some friends were kind enough to drive me out to look at the "Humphrey's Gully " gold-mining claim. It was a pleasant drive, through picturesque country, in which nestled quaint mining hamlets that already had taken on a strangely old world aspect. Everywhere were ferns such as would have given ecstasies to a British fancier ; and over the fern-verdure waved the tall sombre pines. A broad placid river flowed gently down to the sea, margined by paddocks whosegrassliadthegreenncssof the old country. And above the flowing water, clinging on the slopes between the rivermeadows and the ferns, there were pretty picturesque cottages over whose porches and gables trailed the roses and honeysuckles. About ten miles from Hokitika we pulled up at a lone public house, where we were to leave the vehicle ; for the rest of the way to whei*e Humphrey's nozzle played on the " face " of his Gully was to be done only on foot, and not very easily thus, as I had occasion to discover. As we halted, there emerged from fie bar of the public-hou^e a man. He wore the long boots and the woollen jumper of a miner, but he had accentuated his mission by accoutring himself with a tall hat considerably the worse for wear. This article of attire he took ofl', and deliberately set down on the stoop under the public-house verandah. From its depths he produced a voluminous blue pocket handkerchief which he used with effusion and replaced. Then he accosted the inmates of the vehicle. He set forth, using grotesquely the longest words he could unearth, that he was a delegate from Doughtown, which he explained was across the swamp and beyond the ridge. Doughtown had heard that I was being brought out to visit Humphrey's Gully, and had sent its representative to beg with all respect, but with vehement urgency, that I should pay a visit to Doughtown, and favour the inhabitants of that camp with a lecture. It was a young and sequestered place, was Doughtown, he explained ; still chiefly in the can van stage of development. He had been appointed town clerk in advance of the town ; and he spoke therefore with some official position. If I consented, he would immediately return to Doughtown with the news, whereupon a deputation should betake itself to where we now were, to await our return from Humphrey's Gully, and escort me across to Doughtown in worthy and seemly fashion. There was only one reply possible to so flattering a request. The delegate reinstated hiB hat, and diffidently offered to 11 shout " for drinks round ;he was told, he explained, to spare no expense, only he wished to avoid seeming presumptuous. We walked on into the Gully ; he started across the swamp for Doughtown. Of the Gully I will only say that it wasvery rugged, very slippery, and not a little damp. But even in the remote recesses of Humphrey's Gully civilisation was justified of her children. We had " afternoon tea " with a miner's wife in a shanty whose canvas walls were lined with pictures from the "Illustrated News "and "Graphic." The good lady had some children, but professed concern abouthsr eldest son, a live youth of twelve. She could not get him to mind his books, for there was no minute of any day that he did not spend in assiduous prospecting. The young gentleman took me aside later on, and tried to open a negotiation in relation to a claim which he averred would beat the Humphrey's Gully into fits. As we approached "Webster's Corner," on the return journey, the Doughtown deputation were visible, lounging under the verandah. We were greeted with a cheer as we drove up, and every member of it duly introduced by the "town clerk," who by this time was himself rather limp, although his tall hat retained its agressive stiffness, solemnly shook hands. They were a fine manly set of fellows, those Doughtown men ; strapping, upright, bearded, with heads well up, and frank honest eyes. The speech bewrayed that most of them

were Scots. They had a final drink round, and then wo set out for the two miles' trudge to Doughtown. There was no cartroad to that place, and no wheeled vehicle had ever beon nearer it than " Webster's." The " town clerk " hilariously led the way ; we followed in a posse ; and a lone man in tho rear trudged with a big stone jar slung by a strap over his shoulder. When we got in the swamp, tho miners insisted on carrying me on a " king's cushion." With interclasped hands two abreast they made a sort of seat on which I sat with an arm round the neck of each of my bearers. I was not in robust health, and they had somehow come to know this : they all but resorted to physical force to ensconce me in the living chair in which I sat. Then we climbed a low green-ridge, and lo ! Doughtown lay at our feet. As regards looks, Doughtown had no great pretensions. There was a higgledy-pip--geldy of tents and shanties among the stumps, and all around was the oozy stunted sour-looking forest. Some holes there were, and hillocks of sweaty soil, and hero and there a " whim," and yonder a windlass with a bucket close up to the cross-bar. The population, numbering about 200 ablebodied men, a good many women and a large assortment of children, had clustered in the foreground, and welcomed our appsarance in the distance with vehement cheering and a desultory gun-fire.- ' A few Hags waved in the damp languid wjnd. As we drew near, Doughtown cains out to meet us, A grey-bearded man was in advance ; him the "town clerk" introduced under the high-sounding title of " the reeve of Doughtown." Then with indiscriminate hand -shaking we passed on, until the reeve halted in front of a central shanty which I assumed was the Guildhall and Mansion House of Doughtown all in one. We— my Hokitika friends had accompanied me — were invited inside, where the brown jar made good its appearance, and where, after formal introduction to the conscript fathers, the health was enthusiastically drunk of the person whom the worthy reeve was so good as to call "our distinguished visitor." After those preliminaries, the formal business commenced on the stoop outside. Modesty needs that I bury in oblivion the flattering expressions which his worship permitted himself in introducing me to the Doughtown audience. It was necessary for me to explain that having been taken by surprise, I could only speak from memory. But the excellent folks of Doughtown were not exacting. Any pause that occurred from a lapse in ready words they filled up with applause. One longer interval than usual they melodiously utilised by singing "For he's a jolly good fellow," right through to the bitter end. When I had made an end of speaking, " God save the Queen " was sung, partly as a finale, partly as introduction to the speeches in which a vote of thanks was proposed. Then it became time for us to go. But I must not go emptyhanded as it seemed. I had noticed the " town clerk " with his hat in his hand, dodging about among the audience, standing there out in the open. Presently he came up on to the stoop and whispered to the reeve. That civic chief spread his red cotton handkerchief on the table which had been brought outside, and the "town clerk " emptied into the handkerchief the contents of his hat. It was a curious collection. There was a sovereign, several half sovereigns, one threepenny piece at least, and quite a number of little nuggets. And this miscellaneous assortment of metal the reeve announced was Doughtown's contribution in requital of my lecture. He wished, said he, he was sure all wished, that the collection had been four times as lavish, but " things," he explained, " are just now rather quiet with us." Of course I could not take the offering— that was out of the question. I declined with some expression of full satisfaction in the compliment that had been paid to me, the pleasant memory of which any recompence would utterly mar. I picked out a small nugget which I would have pet in a shirt pin as a souvenir, and concluded by wishing success to Doughtown. But theauthoritieswereobviousiy not fully satisfied with this arrangement. There was a consultation between the reeve and the "town clerk." The latter went inside, and camo back with a small packet which he handed to his worship. Then his worship commanded silence, and spoke thus : " Sir, to-day will bememorable in Doughtown annals. It marks the first step in Doughtown's intellectual career. You, sir, have come among us. We are a remote community, but we have energy, perseverance, and industry. You can tell the old country when you go back to it, that in becoming Row Zealand colonists, we have not ceased to be Britons. You have heard us, sir, sing 'God Save the Queen,' and that with us, sir, was no unmeaning chant ; it came from out our very hearts. We are a peaceful folk. You have described battles to us, and I am sure you had no listener who was not glad that his lot has not been cast in such scenes. But there is no man of us who would not brave all dangers and horrors you told us of on behalf of Queen and country. You will do us a good turn if you will let that be known at home. And, sir, you decline to take any recompense for the trouble you have given yourself this day on our account. But we may beg of you to take away with you such a souvenir as may give you an interest in the fortunes of Doughtown. Some of our citizens have just united their mining interests into a company, the prospects of which, it is true, are still in embryo, but in which we allow ourselves firmly to believe. I hold in my hand, sir, the scrip of two hundred shares in the 'Doughtown United Gold Mining Company, Limited,' and of that scrip, sir, in the name of the community of Doughtewn, I respectfully request your acceptance. For the present you will find it unsaleable at any price ; but the time may come, sir, when, in the words of Dr. Johnson, it may ' enrich you beyond the dreams of avarice. ' Your acceptance, sir, will give Doughtown a fresh incentive to make the enterprise a success," I took the scrip. One share I have pasted into my album as a souvenir. The rest Ido not care particularly about holding. The rumour of an imminent call has reached me. Perhaps I should mention that there is a liability of fifteen shillings on each share. The worthy reeve did not mention this petty circumstance, and of course I could not look the gift-horse in the mouth. Are there any applicants then for 199 shares of the "Doughtown United " ?

Here is something for the opponents of tobacco. In 1878 611 manufacturers' licences were paid for ; in 1883 the number had fallen to 561, a decrease of nearly 10 per cent. 302,129 dealers' licences were taken out in 1878, but only 290,415 in 1883, a diminution of more than 4 per cent. The contraction of the wholesale and retail tobacco trade is the more remarkable in view of the increase of population in the United Kingdom. An American authority says the whit© elephant craze appears to be dying— not dyeing— out, and that of thirty-six circuses now on the road only thirty-two advertise white elephants. It is suspected that the managers of the other four shows haVe j joined the 1 Church, and are trying to lead better lives.