Like the fleet sea-bird round the fowler's skiff,
Lost in the mist one moment, and the next
Brushing the white sail with a whiter wing
As if to court the aim. Experience watches,
And has her on the turn."

When the Waitara war broke out the white population did not number
more than seventy-five thousand. When Te Kooti was chased into the
King Country it had grown to nearly four times that sum, in the face
of debt, doubt, and the paralyzing effects of war. A great ally of
settlement had come upon the scene. In 1861 profitable goldfields were
discovered in Otago. The little Free Church colony, which in thirteen
years had scarcely increased to that number of thousands, was
thunderstruck at the news. For years there had been rumours of gold
in the river beds and amongst the mountains of the South Island. From
1857 to 1860 about L150,000 had been won in Nelson. 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.
But it was not until the winter of that year that the prospector,
Gabriel Read, found in a gully at Tuapeka the indubitable signs of a
good alluvial field. Digging with a butcher's knife, he collected in
ten hours nearly five-and-twenty pounds' worth of the yellow metal.
Then he sunk hole after hole for some distance, finding gold in all.
Unlike most discoverers, Read made no attempt to keep his fortune
to himself, but wrote frankly of it to Sir John Richardson, the
superintendent of the province. For this he was ultimately paid the
not extravagant reward of L1,000. The good Presbyterians of Dunedin
hardly knew in what spirit to receive the tidings. But some of them
did not hesitate to test the field. Very soberly, almost in sad
solemnity, they set to work there, and the result solved all doubts.
Half Dunedin rushed to Tuapeka. At one of the country kirks the
congregation was reduced to the minister and precentor. The news went
across the seas. Diggers from Australia and elsewhere poured in by the
thousand. Before many months the province's population had doubled,
and the prayerful and painful era of caution, the day of small things,
was whisked away in a whirl of Victorian enterprise. For the next few
years the history of Otago became a series of rushes. Economically,
no