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Updated: June 23, 2025
Having to throw the wash-dirt eleven feet, a lot of the pebbles in it would come back on and bruise my naked body. Carolan and his mate determined to sink another shaft in the deep sinking to hit the lead again. We had a consultation, and decided I should take in as partner an old miner known as "Greasy Bill," who possessed a horse and cart, cradles, and all the plant required for shallow sinking.
Evidently the digger had deserved his fate, and had been caught stealing wash-dirt from Sin Fat's tips; but his denials were readily and gladly accepted by the whites, and another excellent reason for demolishing the Chows was registered in the minds of the men.
They struck the wash-dirt in their first claim, and Jim, in sinking through the alluvial, stuck his pick into the largest nugget he had yet seen, a lump of rugged gold, pure and clean, which Mike estimated to be worth four hundred pounds.
By this time Jim was feeling himself quite an experienced digger; he could sink a straight shaft, knock down wash-dirt with the best, and pan off a prospect as neatly and with as workmanlike a flourish as any man on the field.
His pick was not bringing out much to-day, however, for he seemed abstracted and would occasionally pause in his work, while his thoughts wandered far away from the narrow streak of wash-dirt in the "face." He was digging out pictures from a past life. They were not pleasant ones, for his face was stony and white in the dim glow of the candle.
The wash-dirt was white gravel, intermixed with heavy boulders, on a soft pipeclay bottom; its thickness being from 2 to 3 feet. It averaged in some places 3 oz. to the load. Finally, a rush set in, and before three months had elapsed there were more than 15,000 miners on the ground.
Their first claim was nearly worked out, and the two young men were busy below digging out the last of the wash-dirt, when a voice calling down the shaft caused both picks to be suspended simultaneously, and the mates looked curiously into each other's faces in the dim candle-light. Hello below, there! 'Aurora! said Mike. Jim went up the rope suspended in the shaft hand over hand.
Years before this, however, the shores of the Hauraki Gulf had been systematically worked, and in 1871 the gold export from Auckland had risen to more than £1,100,000. New Zealand still remains a gold-producing colony, albeit the days of the solitary adventurer working in the wash-dirt of his claim with pick, shovel, and cradle are pretty nearly over.
Isley wound slowly but sturdily, and soon the bucket of "wash" appeared above the surface; then he took it in short lifts and deposited it with the rest of the wash-dirt. "Isley!" called his father again. "Yes, father." "Have you done that writing lesson yet?" "Very near." "Then send down the slate next time for some sums." "All right."
Then we were shown a monkey not the animal, but a small upright shaft leading into a drive above, where the wash-dirt was being got out. Should the course of the wash-dirt, in which the gold is, go downward below the level of the well or the drives for draining the mine, the shaft must then be sunk deeper down. The monkey was rather difficult for me to scramble up.
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