66 'Historical Notes on the 



to them, and the peculiar charm of a perfectly unknown region, where it 

 was reported, not only that the call of the Moa had been heard, but that 

 the gigantic bird had even been seen ; the thick primeval forest, and the 

 mountain scenery, described as magnificent, exercised at the same time 

 an additional power of attraction. In the autumn of lS6i 

 several hundred gold-diggers went there from Otago as pioneers ; thev 

 first worked in the Greenstone Creek, flowing into the Teramakau 

 river, but after a few weeks they removed to the goldfields, dis- 

 covered in the meantime at the Wainiea river, six miles south of the 

 Teramakau. The letters of these people to their friends, in which 

 they described the extremely rich finds, and the repeated remark that 

 brilliant "prospects " might be expected almost wherever a pick and 

 shovel was put into the terrace, or bed of a creek prospected, soon had 

 the effect of making the numerous diggers who were working in the 

 Otago goldfields leave them in crowds, and set out for the West 

 Coast. Besides the restlessness of a goldfield population, which is 

 proverbial, the prospect of the mild winter on the West Coast, with 

 its inexhaustible forests, presented such a favourable contrast to the 

 severe continuous cold, and the violent snowstorms in the sub -alpine 

 country of Otago, where there is great scarcity of firing, that it 

 served as an additional incentive to migration. Quite 8000 gold- 

 diggers set out from Otago for the new Eldorado. Towns like Queens- 

 town and Kingston on the Wakatipu lake soon stood almost entirely 

 deserted, and the few inhabited houses sheltered for the most part 

 the female portion of the population, who only waited for decided 

 news from the West Coast to follow their husbands with the children 

 Houses which a few months before could not have been bought for less 

 than several hundred pounds were got rid of for a trifle ; strange to 

 say. in just the same feverish haste these very people hurried away 

 from the place to which they had so lately come through numerous 

 privations and dangers. 



Whoever is acquainted with life in the goldfields, will understand 

 that, with the gold-diggers proper, the whole population which 

 follows in their train, immediately departed. Not only the storekeepers 

 and packers, artisans, and publicans, but also the demi-monde, 

 sharpers and idlers of every kind, resembling marauders who follow an 

 army, moved like a living stream through the country. In the meantime 

 the gold fever had not only attacked the population of the Otago 



