Page:Old Westland (1939).pdf/112

92 Australia, and came to New Zealand from Victoria, but I am unable to state when he arrived in this country.

“Waite wrote a small pamphlet in 1869 entitled ‘A Narrative of the Discovery of the West Coast Goldfields,’ edited by W. H. L. Leach, printed at the office of the Nelson Examiner, and published by J. Hounsell, bookseller and stationer, of Nelson, and I possess a copy thereof presented to me by the late Mr. Turnbull, founder of the Turnbull Library. He states that in or about the month of May, 1860, he was on the Collingwood goldfields when a party of Maoris came overland from the Buller River by travelling up the coast, and thence by the Aorere to Collingwood, bringing with them a parcel of gold which they said they had obtained some twenty miles up the Buller. The author adds that the gold was a splendid sample, and that upon seeing it, he conceived the idea of organising a prospecting expedition to the West Coast. Here let me state that I have reason to believe it was in the month of April, 1860, that the party of Maoris brought the gold to Collingwood, and Waite himself does not appear to be exact about the date when he fixes it at in or about the month of May. The Maoris had gone to the West Coast in search of gold, because they had acquired at Collingwood a knowledge of the somewhat primitive methods of gold digging in vogue in