Page:Discovery of the West Coast Gold-Fields Waite 1869.pdf/23

 I was ill or eight or nine months, so that I cannot tell much about the opening of Charleston, or the diggings known as Waite’s Pakihis. I was surprised, on my return to the Buller, to see a large town sprung up, though it was nothing more than I had predicted long before. When I stood on the Point looking at the steamers, the shipping, and about thirty ferry boats plying for hire, and the hundreds of people walking to and fro, and the number of horses and drays, I thought on the change in the scene from the time I landed on this point when I pitched my first tent to put my stores in. We had then to clear the bush to pitch a tent. The first night the rats were constantly running over us, and we had to cover our heads over with the blankets to keep them off our face. Afterwards I rented a Maori “whare” to start a store in, and the little craft I had chartered was the only vessel in the lagoon; so, thought I, that little ketch was the forerunner of all the commerce on the West Coast.

How wondrous are the changes wrought in this world in the course of a few brief years by the all-powerful influence of the precious metal that sways the universe! All bow to the shrine of wealth; gold rules alike the subject and the king—it rules the world! Gold governs society in all its many grades, and leads the hand of civilization to the distant corners of the earth. Gold is the talisman that transforms with magic power the bleak and sterile wilderness to a region of luxury and wealth. Places where but a few years ago the foot of man had never trod, are now teeming with busy working multitudes, aided by all the new improvements that modern science gives to machinery for turning out the hidden treasures of the soil. Roads are formed where the venturous prospector could with difficulty only force a passage by undergoing the greatest privations, and often took days to perform a distance that he can now accomplish in as many hours. All these things, and many others that I shall mention at the conclusion of this narrative, struck me as I stood upon the Point, once so barren and desolate, now so full of bustling life.

I will here just mention that the diggings known as Waite’s Pakihis are named after me—being upon my runs of 6,000 acres and 3,000 acres, upon which I am entitled to a pre-emptive right. I have been seeking to obtain a recognition of this right, which, had it been granted at the time I first applied for it, would have done me some good. But I could not succeed. There was any amount of putting off from time to time, and thousands of diggers traversed the Pakihis everywhere. My cattle, by which I lost considerably, were shot down and scattered in all directions, and driven so wild that I had to sell them at a nominal price. Mr. Kynnersley, Gold-fields Commissioner, wrote to the Government in this strain:—

—I am informed by Mr. Reuben Waite that he has applied to the Commissioner of Crown Lands to purchase eighty acres for a homestead on