Page:Life·of·Seddon•James·Drummond•1907.pdf/31

 proper township under the Mining Act. His idea was to make it on the same plan as Melbourne, in hopes, probably, that it would attain the marvellous growth of that great city.

As some reward for his services, one of the streets was named after him, and he lived in it for some years. More than that, he was elected the first Mayor of Kumara when it was promoted to municipal rank.

The little town has not progressed very rapidly, and there is not much likelihood that it will ever achieve greatness as it is understood in regard to colonial cities. A New Zealand journalist who accompanied Mr. Seddon to the West Coast in 1904, on the occasion of rejoicings at the silver jubilee of his entry into Parliament, describes Kumara in an interesting manner. He says:—

“Kumara is still essentially a mining township, prolific in hotels and permeated with the gold fever that, like the ague of the tropics, stays with the man it attacks until his last hour. Its residents live either by mining or by supplying miners. Gaunt flumes stalk across the country towards the titanic excavations that the driven water has made in the once smiling river flats, and black pipe-lines lie across the country like huge snakes. The bed of the Teremakau is disfigured by the many thousand tons of tailings that have been poured into it, and the whole landscape tells of man’s strenuous search for gold.

“Yet, although it stands amidst a wrecked country, Kumara is very far from being unattractive. To the visitor from any other part of the colony it has the charm of originality, of life in a new form and under new conditions. The architecture is quite strikingly distinctive. The mass of the houses would seem to have been built in a hurry, as by men impatient over a labour that promised no golden return, and there is a general unpainted, rugged air that fits in well with the surrounding country. In common with other parts of the Coast, almost every house has the outside chimney, either of iron or of wood, lined with iron, telling of the wide open fireplace and of cheery log fires, and many have their scraps of garden, assisting materially to improve the general effect. Perhaps the most