of explaining these things otherwise than by
referring them to chance or luck.

I shall try how I may be magnetically affected
to New Zealand gold. I will go to Otago.

To judge from my own experience, the
province of Otago must get all the rain. Certainly
I saw it blessed with the most plentiful supply
of water. There was the sea all round, almost
constant rain overhead, and the ground beneath
so full, that great part of the flat was unworkable.

One day, our tent was robbed of five ounces
thirteen pennyweights of gold (at three pounds
twelve shillings an ounce). I had always carried
the gold about with me; but on that day I left it
planted in my stretcher, my mate promising to
take it when he went out. I went to visit some
old mates seven or eight miles off, and to get
dinner with them (it being Sunday). When I
came back, the gold, and nothing else, was gone.
My pistols and watch lay close to it. My
mate came home soon after, and said he had
forgotten it. He shortly left me, and I lived
by myself, with a bull-dog at the door, and a
loaded revolver under my pillow.

One day I took my dog, a gun I borrowed,
and a long knife. A man went with me, and
he had another dog. We crossed the ranges
for about five miles, and found signs of wild
pigs—fresh signs; presently we saw a little
white one sunning himself on the opposite range,
so we went quietly up, and, through the fern,
out bolted three or four large, and half a
dozen little, pigs. I fired at a large one, but
missed it; the dogs gave chase to another; and
I followed a couple of little ones, they doubling
about in the fern, which was waist deep, like
rats. At last I caught one, and immediately
went to help the dogs, which had got by the
ears a boar of about sixty pounds weight. It
was not very easy to stick him, on the side of a
steep range. I put the blade, six inches long,
behind his shoulder up to the handle, and it
seemed to have no effect on him, but at last I
got him into the gully and finished him. We
then killed a sow of about a hundred pounds
weight, and after a good run found more pigs,
one an enormous boar, but I killed none. We
carried home the boar and half the other, and
also the captured pigling—little "Denis"—a
long tramp over the ranges, and it came on to
rain, of course. I put the little one in a sty
close to my tent, where I had him for some days
inside. He would eat from my hand the first
night; next day he would follow me anywhere.
I lived on salt wild pork for weeks after that
pig hunt: a great saving where meat was from
ninepence to a shilling a pound, and hunger
sharp.

Of eatables free to all, besides the pigs
descended from those that Captain Cook left on
the island, there are very fine eels in the creeks.
I have seen them of ten pounds weight, and
heard of some weighing as much as twenty-
eight pounds.

Nothing the richer for my first month's work
at the Otago diggings, I was next packing to
Fox's from Quecnstown and Frankton, to go
with horses for wages. After that I went
digging again, with my old mate, of course.
The most we could make was about three
pounds a week per man. We went out to the
district of Lake Wakatipua, which is half way
between Frankton and Fox's, and on the main
road then just opened for drays the only
dray road in this district. With an enormous
amount of labour, having to carry all the
materials a good distance, we built a hut of twenty
feet long by twelve wide, thatched it, fitted it
up inside, and opened it as a store and
accommodation-house for travellers. We carried all
the timber on our shoulders from the Kawaran
river, down which it had drifted in the floods,
to build that hut, at a distance of a mile and a
half, and up several steep hills. My mate, who
was a carpenter by trade, then heard of a job at
the camp at the Arrow (Fox's), putting up
quarters for the commissioner, troopers, &c.
There he worked two or three months, getting
twenty-five shillings a day, while I made a few
pounds a week by our store.

You may think it foolish for a fellow to rush
about the country, and especially such a country
as this, but from the very nature and character
of digging affairs one can hardly avoid it. A
man comes to a place some time after it has
been " rushed;" after a good deal of running
about, he gets a piece of ground that pays him
for the working; works it out, and can get no
more. For, while he has been well employed,
hundreds of later arrivals have been busy round
about with pick, shovel, and tin dish, and have
taken up every bit of ground worth working.
The first comer knocks about for a while, idle,
and then, perhaps, hears of a rush, knows that
if he is not among the first he stands a poor
chance in comparison with those who are, and
that if he is, he may, by not unheard-of luck,
clear thousands in a few weeks, as some did at
the first rush on the Shotover and Arrow Rivers.
If he is a wise man, he rolls up his blankets and
is off.

New Zealand is a hard country for the digger.
High mountains, deep rapid rivers, and steep-
sided gullies to cross, very little or no firewood
in many parts, and a climate that suits those
coming from England direct better than it does
the old Victorian diggers like myself. Where
I now sit, whether 1 look north, south, east, or
west, I see mountains towering one above
another, and covered with snow, except on
brown-looking patches, which are precipices, or
places too steep for the snow to lie on. Mount
Remarkable, which lies just over the Kawaran,
and S.S.E. from this place, has had patches
of snow on it all through the summer, which
has been a very warm one. I write now in mid-
winter, on the seventh of July.

I should much like to see some of the birds
that Mr. Haast mentions in his account of
explorations here, especially the nakapa and the
kiwi.  We have the wekas, or wood-hens, also
the plovers, kakas, and ducks, and some parrots.