Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/153

Rh of malachite on quartz, found about a hundred yards from our camping ground. In the galena there is evidently a large proportion of sulphur. We put one of the pieces on the fire at the hut, and it gave forth a blue flame with a suffocating sulphury odour. The bed of the creek at the mine smells strongly of it for some distance.

While I left my four companions for a time examining the silver mine, and each picking out a few specimens for his own particular purpose, I went on a Pickwickian ramble among the rocks examining the little pebbles in creeks and crevices, in the forlorn hope that a ruby or an opal or some precious stone might meet my view. For the period of fifteen minutes, more or less, I desired to be a prospector and a discoverer. I felt as if I could be contented were I happening to stumble on a small diamond field on my own account, or were I to be confronted by a female moa feeding about, followed by one or two of its offspring. Gold and silver will be so common in Westland, between the Taipo and Mount Rangitoto discoveries, that we shall be obliged to quit these regions or prospect for something new. Diamonds and moas would afford novelty and variety. Whilst I was thus meditating, my mates were doing the baptismal honours to the mine, but as I was not present, I am unable to furnish a reliable report of the ceremony. I was informed, however, on their return to the tent, that they scooped out a silver cup and christened the mine after the manner of men, in pure water, bestowing on it the name of its parents, the Prospectors. Hudson, I was told, assumed the clerical office for the time, and dilated somewhat after this manner. He addressed the assemblage—they were three in number—by the name of “brethren,” and he regretted to think that it was out of his power to request them to partake of any other than of the pure ethereal. They had been Good Templars by force of circumstances, and no one regretted this more than himself, unless it was “Waitaki Bob.” He directed their attention to the great moral set forth in the mine, the mountains, and the kilts they stood in. He thought these presented evidence of the magnificent and munificence of nature, but of the insignificance of art in that neighbourhood; in short, in their shorts, they must feel the need of a tailor on Mount Rangitoto. They might be compared to the “three tailors of Tooley Street,” and well they could in one sense, for their views were the views of the whole mountains and the people thereof, but again in another sense they had not a needle amongst them. They were welcome, as did their fathers of old, even before the days of Lazar, to take pieces and shekels of silver, and they were to drink, but he defied them to become drunken. In the name of Palmer, Bevan, and Kenway, he then christened the mine, and shortly after the echoing chorus was sounded of “Home again” while the party were seen scrambling up the creek.

Shortly after assembling together again at our Camp, the Survey party and Frew and party reached us. They were wet and weary enough, most of them being obliged to carry heavy swags. Then did it commence to rain and blow in all earnestness. I question very much, if Anthony Trollope had been there with his advice “don't blow,” that it would have been effective in saving our fire-fly. It did fly. I made a series of sublunary visions out of a small hole in the hut, and could distinguish no more