CHAPTER Y. 
Gold. 
The gokl-riches of Australia. — Incentive to prospecting parties in New Zealand. — 
First discovery of gold near Coromandel Harbour in the Province of Auckland, in 1852. — 
Scanty result. — The Nelson goldfields. — The Motueka diggings in 1856. — The Aorere gold- 
field in 1857. — Satisfactory results. — The Western ranges of the Province of Nelson. — 
The auriferous formations. — Aorere diggings. — Parapara diggings. — Tnkaka diggings. — 
Discoveries of gold in the Southwestern part of the Province of Nelson. — Discovery of the 
Eldorado in the Province of Otago on the Tuapeka, 1861. — Gold fever. — Diggers Hock- 
ing in from Australia. — Great extent of the gold-deposits. — Gold in the Province of Marl- 
borough 1864. — The Westcoast of the Province of Canterbury. — Hokitika, the metropolis 
of the Westland goldfields. Appendix. Produce of goldfields. 
The Australian Colony Victoria sent to the International Exhi- 
bition in London, in 1802, a gilded obelisk of 10 feet square at 
the basis and 45 feet high. This obelisk, if it were a solid mass 
of gold , would have a weight of 800 tons ; it represents the volume 
of gold produced by the colony from October 1, 1851 to October 1, 
1861 , valued at 104 million pounds. The population of Victoria, 
numbering in 1851 only 70,000 inhabitants, has increased since to 
550,000 , and Melbourne which but a few decades ago consisted of 
some wretched shanties on the sea coast, is now a large, splendid 
city, a capital with 100,000 inhabitants. Such a rise is without 
precedent in the history of colonies, and the Eldorado of the South 
Sea, of which the Spaniards of the fifteenth century were dream- 
ing , lias here become full reality in the nineteenth century. 
The discovery of the golden riches in Australia reacted very 
