Page:Charleston • Irwin Faris • (1941).pdf/15



HE history of Charleston, with its romance of gold-seeking and finding; the story of its pioneers and its later community life; its rise, decline and final desolation, has never been told; but told it should have been long since.

To-day the picture is lost, and the tale cannot be set out in full, for its first-day personalities have passed, and few records have been kept during the seventy-four years that have fled since its birth.

These chapters are but a collection of such facts as a careful search has discovered among the few available sources of information. From these and old photographs, deductions have been drawn, while oral statements of old residents, or their children, have been pieced together. Of the very earliest days none can speak from personal knowledge, but must rely upon hearsay, or even the memory of hearsay, both of which are extremely liable to err, for Memory is a fickle jade who plays many tricks.

If, despite careful sifting, inaccuracies have crept in, indulgence is craved. An honest endeavour has been made to picture and reconstruct the life of this once thriving town which is now hardly more than a name and a dot upon the map of the Nelson Province.

The life of an early goldfield township is entirely different from that of an individual. In man’s life, childhood is the period of innocence, and youth the period of learning—learning of things commanded and of things forbidden, with maybe some consideration as to which of the latter he will do when he grows up. With manhood comes the doing of things; and with age, memories, moralising and endeavours to rescue from