United States or Albania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The next day's ride lay through the scene of the late Lindis diggings, but not a vestige of the encampments remained beyond the ruins of the hut walls and excavations. The gold diggings proved a failure, and within a few months of our leaving them they were deserted.
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. The Lindis was one hundred and twenty miles inland from Dunedin.
We remained one day for repairs and then, in company with Brand, had a glorious sail down the lake to Wynne's station. Our return journey to Christchurch was without incident save one, worth mentioning. This was where we were both nearly drowned crossing the Lindis in a flood. Moorehouse, I believe, sold his interest in the Wanaka district for a song.
I omitted to mention that during our residence on the Lindis we were sadly troubled with rats. There must have been millions in the locality, and it was very difficult to guard our food from their depredations. During the day they mostly disappeared until sundown, when they came in swarms to the tents.
We saw much of this on the Lindis diggings. They were not a general success at that time, as we soon discovered to our cost; and many who went there wildly hoping to find gold for the picking up, and with no means to withstand a reverse, were only too glad to work for those who had means to carry on for a while, for their food only.
On the first day's ride from here we went over the Lindis Pass, the scene of so much hardship to us diggers, and on to McClean's station, where we received a hearty Scotch welcome and an excellent dinner, and sat up late with the old gentleman discussing whiskey toddy and chatting over old times.
In 1858, a certain Asiatic, Edward Peters, known to his familiars as Black Pete, who had somehow wandered from his native Bombay through Australia to Otago, had struck gold there; and in March, 1861, there was a rush to a short-lived goldfield at the Lindis, another spot in that province.
McLean indeed did not refuse to sell fat cattle, but he demanded prohibitive prices, and so it was customary to procure meat from a distance. We had been now two months on the Lindis, our funds instead of increasing were diminishing, and we saw little or no hope of a change for the better. An exodus had already commenced, and the incomers were daily decreasing in number.
Here we found the inhabitants in great excitement over news just arrived that gold had been discovered in large quantities on the Lindis, about one hundred and twenty miles inland from Dunedin in Otago.
I have seen the mad fire catch hold of mart and dwelling in a blazing town that met Duke William's anger. I saw in the north the great eygre rush through Lindis' bed, and swamp the peaceful plain with doom and ruin. Not less resistless, not less vehement was the first assault of Samson's Normans.
Word Of The Day