Five Years in New Zealand Part 6

We travelled in the usual bush fashion, each man with his swags strapped before and behind his saddle, Jack the Devil carrying our provisions and cooking kit, etc. Upon halting for the night we selected some suitable spot near running water where wood for a fire could be obtained. Each unsaddled, watered, and tethered out his horse and carried his swags to the camping ground, where Jack's load was removed and placed ready for use. Then while one fetched water another collected a supply of firewood for the night. A roaring fire was made, water boiled for tea, flour and water mixed into a paste and fried in dripping or fat, with the meat we had brought along with us, or maybe a leg of mutton would be baked in the camp oven; and so, within an hour, we four bushmen would be squatting comfortably around our fire and enjoying an excellent supper.

The meal being over we carefully washed and put away the utensils and food ready for the morning, and after visiting the horses, settled ourselves in our respective positions for the night, lit pipes, spun yarns, or sang songs, till drowsiness claimed us, and we disappeared under our blankets with our saddles for pillows and slept only as those who lead the life of a bushman can.

We rose before daybreak, and ere the sun had well appeared had eaten our primitive breakfast and were in the saddle for the march. On the evening of the third day we reached the Waitaki river, which separates Canterbury from Otago, and is the largest in the South Island. The Waitaki was never fordable at this point, and pa.s.sengers were ferried across in a small boat behind which the horses were swum. This latter is a somewhat dangerous operation unless expertly carried out; a horse which may be a powerful swimmer being able to work a swift stream so much faster than a boat can be rowed, there is danger that he may strike and overturn the latter, and so he must not be allowed to get above or ahead of the boat, but be kept in his place immediately behind.

The boat on being started from one bank or shingle spit must have fair room to work obliquely to a lower landing place on the opposite side, without running foul of shoals or sandspits, and as the current runs with great rapidity the voyage across is usually three or four times as long as the stream is wide.

At this river we found an accommodation house. I forget the name of the occupier, but I well recollect the appearance of the wretched structure, and of its landlord and landlady. What a pair of outcasts they looked, and how they existed on that wild bed of shingle! Their tastes must have been simplicity itself, and little satisfied them here below.

The landlord and his wife, with one other man, who a.s.sisted with the boat, were the only sojourners on this desert bed. Few travellers stayed at their wretched tenement, because being only ten miles from Dunedin they were generally able to push on, and partly because the locality did not possess pasturage for horses; and so with the exception of what they derived from selling an occasional nip of poisonous liquor to a pa.s.sing traveller, their emoluments were derived from the ferry alone.

We were not fortunate enough to arrive in time to cross that evening, and were perforce obliged to stay at the accommodation hut till morning, or else return half a mile to where pasture was obtainable. The landlord, however, produced some hay and oats, and cleaned out his shed, in which we were able to put two of the horses, while the others were tied out, and so to save time and trouble we decided to make the best of what fare we could obtain.

The house comprised one room with a closet or bar off it. In the room, which was well enough when lit up by a good fire, we all supped together round a rough table with boxes from the bar for seats, our food the usual description, the junk of mutton boiled with lumps of dough called damper, and the landlady produced some plates, while we used our own clasp knives. Soon after, our weary bodies were strewn over the floor wherever we could individually select a fairly even spot, and the landlady, I believe, retired into the bar.

The following morning we put ourselves, horses, and baggage safely across the Waitaki, and by 10 o'clock arrived in Dunedin.

Dunedin was situated, like Port Lyttelton, on rising undulating ground, encompa.s.sed by an amphitheatre of hills which, to the south, extended to a point or promontory and gave shelter to the little harbour. Also, like Lyttelton, the latter was an open roadstead, but on the town front was bounded by a steep bank from which the narrow strand beneath was reached by a wide cutting. The town was quite in its infancy, but already possessed some well-laid-out streets and handsome wooden buildings.

As we antic.i.p.ated, we found the good folk of Dunedin much exercised about the gold diggings. They were the first discovered in the country, and the town was in a fever of excitement for news of their success or otherwise. No very reliable information had come, but such as was obtainable appeared sufficiently satisfactory and encouraging to justify our making immediate arrangements for transporting ourselves thither.

CHAPTER XI.

OUR EVENTFUL JOURNEY TO THE LINDIS GOLD DIGGINGS.

The Lindis was one hundred and twenty miles inland from Dunedin. There was no road, and but for a portion of the way up the valley of the Waitaki only a rough bullock dray track leading to some isolated sheep and cattle stations, beyond which there was literally no track at all.

The country was mountainous, and early winter having set in, it was supposed that much of the higher lat.i.tudes would be covered with snow, but beyond the fact that numbers of pedestrians had during the past fortnight proceeded towards the Lindis, and that a ship-load of diggers had arrived from Victoria and were hourly leaving the town, we had nothing reliable to guide us. We heard that the few sheep-farmers on the route were much opposed to the influx of diggers, and had publicly notified that they would not encourage or give them any accommodation on their stations. This was alarming for the time, but fortunately the information proved correct in only one instance. It led us, however, to make such preparation for our journey as would render us to a great extent independent of a.s.sistance on the way.

We purchased a strong one-horse dray which we loaded with about 10 cwt.

of provisions, in the form of flour, tea, sugar, salt, ship biscuits, a small quant.i.ty of spirits for medicinal use and tobacco. Also two small calico tents, some cooking utensils and blankets, with bush tools, spades, picks, and axes.

Legge's horse had been broken to harness, and mine was an excellent draught horse. I omitted to mention that at Timaru I had exchanged my mare for a strong gelding which had previously run in the mail cart, getting 10 boot. The swap proved a fortunate one for us, as neither Smith's nor Fowler's animals had ever been in harness, and "Jack the Devil" was out of the question. Legge's horse and mine therefore were destined for the dray, tandem fashion, and upon trial they pulled splendidly.

When the dray was loaded and covered over with a large waterproof tarpaulin, and our two fine horses yoked thereto, it looked a very business-like turn-out. Two of us took it in turn to walk beside the horses and conduct the team, while the other two rode, accompanied by "Jack," his pack-saddle laden with our needs for the day and night halts.

One fine morning in June, 1861, we started from Dunedin, with our handsome team, the first of its kind that ever travelled the road we were going, and we started from the smiling little town amidst the cheers and good wishes of those we left behind.

For the first few days all was fairly smooth sailing. We travelled about twenty miles each day, camping or resting independently of stations, and the track so far being formed by wool drays, was on the whole feasible, although we had occasionally to make good the crossings over creeks and rivers.

On the evening of the third day we arrived at a small cattle station belonging to a Mr. Davis, where were a number of diggers resting for the night. Mr. Davis was one of those hospitably inclined to the diggers, but as he could not be expected to feed such numbers for nothing, he notified that meals would be charged for at one shilling per head. This was eagerly and gratefully responded to, and upwards of two hundred men were a.s.sembled at the station the evening we arrived.

The kitchen and dining hut being unable to accommodate more than twelve or fifteen at once, a mult.i.tude had to remain outside while each gang went in, in turn, to be fed.

Inside the scene was curious. An enormous fire of logs blazed on the hearth, which occupied one entire end of the hut, over which were suspended two huge pots filled with joints of mutton, beef, and doughboys, boiling indiscriminately together. They were frequently being removed to the table and others subst.i.tuted in their place. The pots were flanked by large kettles of water, into which, when on the boil, a handful or two of tea would be thrown. After a few minutes the decoction would be poured into an iron bucket, some milk and sugar added, and placed upon the table, where each man helped himself by dipping his pannikin therein.

Fortunately the hungry seekers after gold were not particular about their meat being a shade over or under cooked; they were glad to accept what they got, and indeed right wholesome food it was. The doughboys were simply large lumps of dough, made of flour and water, used as a subst.i.tute for bread, of which a sufficient quant.i.ty could not be prepared for the immense demand.

We obtained our turn in due time, and after a hearty meal retired to the quarters we had pitched upon for the night--viz., a straw shed where we rolled our blanket around us and slept soundly.

The following evening, after a severe day's journey, we arrived wet and f.a.gged at the next station, Miller and Gooche's. Here a similar scene was being enacted, and here, in common with many other diggers, we were obliged to remain for several days owing to severe weather setting in.

Miller and Gooche's station was situated at the junction of a tributary stream with the Waitaki, at the entrance of a rugged and mountainous gorge. From this point our real difficulties were to begin, as we would diverge from the main valley we had hitherto followed, and work our way over a rough tract of hilly country, up ravines and spurs to the great pa.s.s, then pretty certain to be covered with snow.

For the four days during which we were detained at this station it rained, sleeted, and snowed alternately and unceasingly. There were upwards of one hundred and fifty men there, and the station running short of flour, a supply had to be procured from Davis's, where luckily a large store had been collected.

Most diggers possessed nothing beyond the clothes they wore, with a blanket and a kettle, and many had no money wherewith to pay for food, so the squatters were obliged to make a virtue of necessity and give free where there was no chance of payment, and this they did right willingly. As for the diggers, I must say so much for them that, rough fellows as they were, they paid freely and gratefully all they could, and I did not hear of a single instance of robbery or outrage save one, and we were the victims of that. It was merely the abstraction, emptying, and replacing on our dray of a case of "Old Tom," all the spirits we possessed, and we did not discover the loss until too late for any chance of detecting the delinquents.

At Miller and Gooche's we pa.s.sed four very miserable days. The two small huts and the sheep shed were filled to overflowing, and we lay on the floor of the latter at night, cold, stiff, dirty, and packed into our places like sardines. The rain and sleet, slop, cold, and offensive odour combined would need to be experienced to be appreciated; it was indescribable and the greatest and most disagreeable of anything I experienced before or since of such a mixture.

At length the weather cleared, and in company with another dray just arrived from Dunedin, and got up in imitation of ours, we started for the pa.s.s, not without grave misgivings of what might be before us.

The first day we made five miles. Our route lay along the course of a large creek bounded both sides by precipitous hills. The recent rain had swollen the stream, and either obliterated or washed away the rough dray track, which even at its best was not suited for the pa.s.sage of a horse team. We were therefore obliged to cut a way in and out of the nullah wherever we crossed; so some idea may be formed of our day's work. We were fortunate in being accompanied by the fresh dray, indeed without it, and the a.s.sistance given by a number of the diggers who kept with us, and with whom we shared our food, I do not think we would have succeeded in getting over the Lindis Pa.s.s, at any rate not nearly so expeditiously as we did. When we came to an exceptionally difficult and steep pull, the drays were taken over one at a time with three horses yoked, and all hands helping them.

On the morning of the second day we were still four miles from the pa.s.s, and it took very severe work from men and horses to negotiate the remainder of that fast narrowing, steep and rugged bed, and late in the afternoon to reach the summit. It was, as we antic.i.p.ated, covered with snow.

The cold that night was intense, and we had difficulty in procuring before dark set in enough brushwood to keep up a small fire for more than a few hours. It was here we discovered the loss of the "Old Tom"

which we had meant to save for just such a special occasion as this. Now that we were half-frozen and without means of bettering our condition for the night, it was proposed to open the first bottle, and have a nip round for ourselves and comrades. Our chagrin and disappointment may be imagined when we found the twelve bottles to contain only water.

I often wondered how we got through that night; one or two of us alone must surely have perished. Our safety lay in our number. We rolled our blankets tightly round us and lay down close together on the wet and now fast freezing ground, and lit our pipes, and then we slept. Tired as we were, nothing could keep sleep from us--even if we were to be frozen during it.

For the horses we had collected a little gra.s.s and carried it on the drays, but they had a bad time of it, and the icicles hung from their manes and tails in the morning as they stood shivering with their backs turned to the keen mountain blast.

However, we all survived, and were none the worse, and as soon as it was light we gathered enough brushwood to make a rousing fire, by which we melted the frozen snow and ice from our blankets, and from the harness before we could put it on the horses.

We soon finished a hearty breakfast of mutton grilled in the hot ashes, and hot tea, and proceeded to get ready for the day's work, which we knew would be a heavy one if we were to get over the pa.s.s before sundown.

It was two miles to the top, but such a two miles to take a horse dray over. The gradient was not only very steep and rough, but it was covered with six to eighteen inches of snow, except in some few exposed parts where it had drifted off and left the surface nearly bare. There was no track to guide us beyond a very uncertain and irregular one made by a few pedestrians and horses who had preceded us the evening before when we had been delayed by the drays.

We decided to take the drays over separately, yoking all four horses to each in turn, tandem fashion, by means of ropes with which we were well provided. Just as we were about to start the first, a party of diggers arrived, who volunteered to push and spoke the wheels. Thanks to these men and the game, honest horses, our difficulties were considerably lightened. Some went before to clear the snow where it lay thickest, but this was soon abandoned as labour in vain.

We found that the utmost efforts of the four horses, a.s.sisted by half a dozen men, were only sufficient to drag the dray from twenty to fifty yards at a spurt, then on stopping to take a breath a log was thrown behind the wheels, and after a few moments' rest another spurt was made, and so on.

Our progress was so satisfactory that before nightfall both drays were safely over the pa.s.s and we had proceeded down the opposite side as far as an out-station of McLean's, on whose run we now were. Here we learned to our joy that we were within twenty-five miles of the reported diggings, with a fairly pa.s.sable track all the way.

Mr. R. McLean was a wealthy sheep farmer who had originally made his money on the Australian goldfields. His present att.i.tude therefore towards the diggers was considered the more cruel. He had given orders at all his out-stations that neither food nor shelter was to be afforded them, and upon our arrival at the shepherd's hut aforesaid, the occupant, a worthy Scotsman, informed us with regret that we would have to arrange for our accommodation in the open, it being as much as his place was worth to feed or shelter diggers. This was unpleasant news, as we hoped to have taken up our quarters in his hut that night after our severe camping out the previous four days.

Although the diggings broke out in McLean's run he had no power to prevent the land being worked upon, excepting only such portions of it as were private property, but he discouraged and put obstacles in the way of the diggers in any form he could, some said because he knew as an experienced digger himself that they would not pay. Whether this was the case or not, he might have understood the impossibility of stopping a gold rush in its infancy, while its value was still an unknown quant.i.ty.

Our last stage the following day was for the greater part by one of the most picturesque valleys I had yet seen. Mr. McLean had made a very fair road from the Lindis Pa.s.s boundary to his home station, which latter was only some five miles from the diggings, so it was very different travelling to what we had experienced on the other side. The track first wound along a deep ravine with rugged precipitous sides, mostly clothed with evergreen underwood from which huge ma.s.ses of rock would now and then emerge, and sometimes overhanging a rushing torrent which had been swelled by the recent heavy rains and thus enhanced the effect on this glorious sunny morning. The waterfalls and cascades sparkled in a hundred colours, wheeling, foaming, and dashing in a mad race amidst huge rocks, till lost in shadow beneath a precipice or overhanging ma.s.s of variegated bush. The gorge then opened out into a level amphitheatre, with the river, grown calm and broad, winding peacefully, and surrounded by the mountains in all their enchanting shades of colour, and the distant peaks capped with snow.

Then another gorge of more imposing grandeur with a magnificent view beyond and through it, closed in turn by a sombre pine forest swept by the river, now grown larger and deeper, dancing and racing like a living thing in the brilliant sunshine and rare atmosphere of a New Zealand morning.

How well I remember the whole trip with all its roughness and all its beauty, its very contrasts no doubt helping to impress it upon the memory. Such scenes and incidents are difficult to forget, even if one would, and each and all are as distinct to my mind in almost every detail at this moment as if I had been with them only yesterday, instead of more than forty years ago.