Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/29

Rh the Grey and Hokitika rivers from their mouths to their sources. As Mr Mackay’s instructions did not permit the making so extensive a reserve, he determined to return to Nelson to comnumicate with the General Government and request further orders. Messrs Mackay and Rochfort had chartered the cutter “Supply,” Captain John Walker, to bring them provisions to the Grey, but owing to bad weather she could not cross the bar of that river, and was compelled to land the supplies at the Buller (now Westport). It was of course utterly impossible to utilise the stores, the distance from the Grey and the impracticable nature of intervening country rendering it impossible to carry them from the Buller. Both parties had therefore the satisfaction of knowing for six months (May to October) that they had plenty of good food at the Buller; although for that period they saw neither flour, meat, tea, nor sugar, and had to live on a few potatoes when at the settlements, and at other times on the natural productions of the country. The cutter “Supply” was the first coasting vessel which entered the Buller River. At the end of August 1859, the Messrs Mackay, accompanied by one Native, proceeded up the valley of the Grey to the Alexander stream and to the Upper Inangahua with the view of proceeding by the Maruia plain and Upper Buller to Nelson. They, however, were forced to abandon the expedition from starvation and the inclement state of the weather, and returned in a most wretched plight to Greymouth. Thence the two Mackays travelled by coast to the Buller, where they found the cutter “Supply” had arrived on a second trip, and sailed in her to Nelson.

Mr James Mackay then went to Auckland, and the Governor, Colonel Gore Browne, instructed him to return to the West Coast, make ten thousand acres of reserves, and give the Natives £300 or £400 for the seven and a half millions of acres comprising that territory,—the Governor remarking that the country was of no use to the few scattered Natives (one hundred and ten in number all told); but it was his duty to make good reserves, which would, by the profitable occupation of the remainder of the land by Europeans, be of more ultimate value than the whole waste untenanted district then was.

Accordingly, early in February 1860, James and Alexander Mackay, Frank Flowers, and three Massacre Bay Natives left Nelson and proceeded to the Rotoiti plains, the intention being to find a practicable line of road available for a road viâ Upper Buller and Maruia to the Upper Grey at the point where Mackay’s exploration ceased in August 1859. Having heard of the difficulties of Brunner’s Devil’s Grip (a very difficult and almost impenetrable piece of country), an attempt was made to find a better route by crossing the range between the lakes Rotorua and descending into the valley of the Tiramuea or Maryleo. Mr Julius Haast, who had been engaged to report on the geology of the south-west portion of the Province of Nelson, accompanied the explorers in this part of the expedition. Mr Alexander Mackay meanwhile was engaged in exploring a line through the Devil’s Grip, and thence towards the mouth of the Maryleo River. They and their party then explored and marked a track running parallel with the Buller to the river Matakitaki and thence to the junction of the Maruia and Buller. Mr Haast