Page:Notes on New Zealand (1892).pdf/174

164 private digger has become the employé of the Company. Secondly, the gold seeker arriving from abroad with the intention of commencing the search on his own account finds in New Zealand towns civilization and society much resembling what he has already been used to, and not a comparatively wild country such as he probably expected. These attractions tend to divert him from his original intention. If he be a labourer he soon finds employment in his old line; if he has any money he soon loses it, for sharpers abound, and "townies" (so-called because they introduce themselves as having come from the