Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/130

100 completes the resemblance to New Caledonia; did not the rebel Canaques cut it down there, and use it in making the stockades, which Messrs E. and J. O’Donahue and myself discovered on our retreat from Oua Tom? Again, the road changes to a vista, which one may have often seen in the home woods of an English park, a drive for pheasants and foxes. I have Stoneleigh in my mind's eye when I see this. Anon, it is a scene in British Columbia. I pass through a dozen climates to-day, besides Fairyland in the Gorge. Everywhere it is beautiful, and if it is so in the winter, what is it in its summer glory? I repeat it is the culmination of all the beauties I have seen, and the traveller who fails to make the journey to the West Coast misses the grandest sight of its kind in the world.

“On we go by the side of the Teremakau, whose channel is broad and vague, but flood limits defined by high wooded banks. We pass a few scattered homesteads, a few patches of cultivation with fences of living fern tree; a few head of cattle are seen running in the bush; a saw-mill or two show we are approaching civilisation. We are nearing the mining districts of Westland, the province which separated itself from Canterbury in 1867, and whose history since the discovery of gold in 1864 has shown Homeric strivings with the forces of nature unsurpassed in the world. It must be remembered that a large portion of the Southern Alps is yet unexplored. ‘It will never be known how many men have perished in these wild mountains and rivers, without a fellow-creature near, or any witness of their fate, but the lofty rocks and towering pine trees. Thousands came to this district year by year in pursuit of wealth, forsaking the comfort of their homes, to lead a life of wild excitement, ending in madness or death, or to perish alone in desolate places.’ But the early gold seeker formed a province, in the second decade they married and settled, as witness the scores of children who run out and cheer us at Dillman’s Town, the first mining settlement we pass through. Here I could imagine myself once more in parts of California or Nevada. Great flumes run across the road. Races, tail-races, sluice-boxes, sludge-channels—everything as one sees it on the Pacific coast. The hillsides have been washed away by water brought to bear through great hoses. The great heaps of stones are covered with a light red fungus, which gives forth a faint perfume. Everything is totally different to an Australian mining centre. Dillman’s Town itself is not very extensive, and the architecture is of the primal digger order, every house having an iron chimney built outside. But the glimpses of reaches of the Teremakau River with its pine-clad banks are very beautiful, and the generally well-fed and well-clad air of the children shows that Dillman’s is a prosperous community.

“On again to Kumara, where we leave a mail. This is quite an important place, full of banks and pubs.; and the Heathen Chinee flourishes in the land. It is very evident that the bottom has not dropped out of things on the West Coast, the same as it has in many places in Otago. Now for ten miles we pass through a mining district. Through Goldsborough (named after some Victorian admirer), through Stafford and Waimea. Water-races and flumes are on each hand. Pubs., banks, and stores in the township all