Page:Old Westland (1939).pdf/192

168 in which case the vessel has to run broadside on to the breakers between the sandspit and the beach. Constable O’Donnell was a fellow passenger on this trip, and he joined Sergeant Broham and Constable Cooper, who were camped at the Grey.

“The few residents turned out to meet us, among whom was Reuben Waite, the earliest settler on the Coast. There was only his store at the landing place, but about a mile to the south there were two others kept by Messrs. Blake and Horsington. The diggings were at the Greenstone, some twenty or thirty miles to the south. I hired a horse and got a packer named De Silva, a foreigner, a talkative, consequential little fellow, to accompany me thither. The day was anything but an inviting one, the rain coming down in torrents. The first ten miles of our journey lay along the beach, the sea being very rough, the breakers rolling in with great force. My guide did not seem to mind but rode right through them. Six miles from the Grey we came to a river, the Paroa, generally known as the Saltwater Creek. This we crossed and four miles further on reached the Taramakau; here there were two stores.

“Our journey now lay inland from the mouth of the river which had to be crossed four times. The Maoris camped about advised us to stay where we were, saying that a ‘fresh’ would be down and that it then would be impossible to