Page:Old Westland (1939).pdf/174

150 had possibly been refused drinks on account, thus gave vent to his spleen:—

“But though an unlettered man, naturally rough, and not made any smoother by years of hard buffeting by men as rude as himself, Blake still possessed a little of the poetry of childhood. The love of the beautiful that is implanted in all youthful breasts was not altogether dead in his, and when the above lines were warbled to him by a half intoxicated customer, he shouted for all hands, and vowed that that pioneer, the writer of ‘that ere song,’ should never want a fifty of flour while he remained on the Coast.”

Blaketown had its day, and its glory departed. “How’s trade?” Blake was asked one morning, shortly after Greymouth was a township. “There aint bin a fight this week” was the answer. It was brief, and to the uninitiated ambiguous, but to those who knew it told a sad tale of ruin and decay.

By this time gold was being found everywhere along the sea beach between the Grey and the Taramakau, and diggers were steadily coming in from the Buller, Nelson and Christchurch, and even at this early date some 40 horses, a mule and a bullock dray were