Page:Old Westland (1939).pdf/137



Howitt’s untimely end, the Canterbury Provincial Government intensified the work of cutting tracks and opening up the country around Lake Brunner; Drake, who was already in the district, taking over Howitt’s duties. (This early surveyor, his work completed in Westland, went north to Nelson, where, some years later, he too met his death by drowning.) The carrying out of these surveys necessarily meant the employment of several men, all of whom were keen prospectors, who, in bad weather, and during their leisure, did their utmost to locate gold, and thus gain the reward offered for the discovery of a payable field. Among those thus employed was a man named Albert William Hunt, a practical prospector, though a man of mystery who was destined to become,