Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/112

84 At length a light breeze brought us off the Buller, and we could plainly hear their shouts of ‘Welcome,’ and presently, with dingy and kedge, we worked her over the bar, amidst the clamour and cheers of the hungry diggers, who were watching us. While we were still in the roll of the seas, canoes came alongside, off went the hatches, and out went the flour and other provisions. When we got ashore we found the baker already making dampers in his oven, for when he saw the vessel close he lit his fire for baking. For a time there had been nothing but potatoes (eked out with eels, nikau, pipis, etc.). There was a lot of damaged flour, which had turned yellow and musty, and was intended for the pigs, but it all went for bread. Such was the state of affairs at the Buller in October and November 1862.” The work of gold finding, as we have already noticed, went bravely on. In the rivers and ranges, north of the Buller and at the Pahikis southward, new ground was opened up; the then busy townships of Charleston, Brighton, and Addison’s sprang into being; along the slopes of the Mount Rochfort ranges hardy miners clustered; and at the Mohikinui, thirty miles north, a bustling little township arose, and over as far north as the Wanganui, Ohimahana, and Karamea streams, the ubiquitous never-daunted digger found means of transporting his swag and tucker. Fortunes were made and spent, and the fame of the Buller goldfield spread afar. At the mouth of the Buller River a busy sea-port town arose, which has a history all its own, a tale of moving incidents and strange vicissitudes.

The voyager, after passing the Three Steeple Rocks and Cape Foulwind with its lighthouse perched on precipitous cliff, will find his craft steadily bearing towards the Buller. He will here scarcely fail, even if suffering the depressing influence of mal de mer, to notice the wide expanse of coastal scenery margining what is known as the Buller roadstead. The coast, which from the point of departure at the Grey trends to the northward for about fifty miles, then turns to the north-west for the next forty, until Rocky Point, the most westerly promontory of this part of the island, is reached. From the Buller mouth to this point is a continuous series of embayed beaches and picturesque headlands, the latter jutting out into the sea, backed up by high forest-covered hills, and behind these again, clad, for many months in the year, with dazzling snow, will be discerned the great mountain chain forming the backbone of the island, and whence the rivers of the West Coast take their rise. Crossing the Buller bar, the voyager will find not a narrow tortuous channel, but a wide and straight run in, up which vessels sail without danger, and where, already, a coal fleet comes and goes, carrying Mount Rochfort black diamonds to the markets of the world. Preparations have been made, a quarter of a million or more of pounds sterling spent in wharves, staiths, and railways, the coal is in the hills in millions of tons, the accumulation of ages, a store which a legion of cyclops could scarce diminish, and its production, as a marketable commodity, has now been fairly established. For this consummation dwellers on the banks of the Buller have long waited, and are, at last, realising their most sanguine expectations. It is, however, with past experiences rather than present expectations we are now dealing.