442 Proceedings. 
produets will bé the same, equal in quality and as highly esteemed, whether 
they be wool, corn, or dairy produce, fresh or cured meat, or malt liquors. 
“Our underground resources have been too little examined to permit of 
much speculation. That we have considerable and easily available coalfields 
is undoubted, and gold may be a valuable part of our exports." 
No doubt my estimates, made at so early a date and while we as a colony 
were groping in the dark, are approximate, yet they were better than the 
estimates of those persons T saw at that time visiting Dunedin, who, looking at 
the snowy mountains behind Mount Cargill, shrugged their shoulders and took 
their passages by the next vessels sailing. The surmise of such was that Otago 
consisted of snowy mountains, whose appearance, in the language of a pioneer 
settler, was as a mass of sugar-loaves on a grocer's “bink.” 
Going to facts as we find them, it is interesting to note in the New Zealand 
Statistics of 1871 that our wool export had increased to £689,182 ; our grain 
to £46,132 ;* and gold to £617,617 sterling, thus more than bearing out my 
anticipations ; but of the latter I pretended to make no estimate. Yet the 
indication of the future was there, as I remarked that “ gold might be a 
valuable part of our exports,” and in giving this opinion I did not act without 
“observation.” I had gone over most part of the Province in 1856 and 1857, 
excepting the Tuapeka district and the western snowy mountains, In doing 
so I had seen gold detected in the Mataura, very generally over the Waiopai 
Plains, as well as in the Lindis; and at the Nokomai the formation gave 
strong evidence of an auriferous nature, which fact T recorded in my field 
book. Yet I traversed the Hogburn (now N aseby), the Raggedy Ranges (now 
Blacks), and Flateap (now Hamiltons) without anticipating the discoveries 
that have since taken place. 
At the same time my much-respected assistant, Mr. Alexander Garvie, in 
whose survey party was Mr. John Buchanan, of Australian gold-mining 
experience and the actual prospector, traversed the Tuapeka district, extending 
his explorations up the Clutha Valley as far as the Kawarau Junction (now 
Cromwell) Over this area Mr. Garvie reported gold to be generally 
distributed, and probably payable by “some wholesale system of washing." 
It was on these data principally that I ventured on the suggestion. It was 
therefore founded on actual observation, and not made at haphazard. 
Such was the state of the gold question in J uly, 1858, and, as subsequent 
events need not engage attention at present, I would refer those interested to 
* As wool is almost entirely exported, while grain and agrieultural produce are 
consumed at home, the statement, without remark, would leave an unfavourable 
impression. The statistics of this last year show the value of agricultural produce to be 
as follows :— Wheat, £372,250 ; oats, £300,300; barley, £66,000; hay, £32,000; potatoes, 
£60,000—£830,550 sterling. 
