nes, where they may thrust down their
steel-pointed flexible spears as much as eight feet, the roaming
diggers use that weapon to explore the field. In the hard open country
they have to fall back upon the spade. Unlike the gold-seeker, the
gum-digger can hope for no great and sudden stroke of fortune. He will
be lucky if hard work brings him on the average L1 a week. But without
anything to pay for house-room, fuel, or water, he can live on twelve
and sixpence while earning his pound, and can at least fancy that he
is his own master. Some 7,000 whites and Maoris are engaged in finding
the 8,000 tons or thereabouts of resin, which is the quantity which in
a fairly good year England and America will buy at an average price
of L60 a ton. About 1,500 of the hunters for gum are Istrians and
Dalmatians--good diggers, but bad colonists; for years of work do not
attach them to the country, and almost always they take their savings
home to the fringing islands and warm bays of the Adriatic.

Chapter XIX

THE PROVINCES AND THE PUBLIC WORKS POLICY

"Members the Treasurer pressing to mob;
Provinces urging the annual job;
Districts whose motto is cash or commotion;
Counties with thirsts which would drink up an ocean;
These be the horse-leech's children which cry,
'Wanted, Expenditure!' I must supply."
--_The Premier's Puzzle_.

Sir George Grey had been curtly recalled in the early part of 1868.
His friends may fairly claim that at the time of his departure the
Colony was at peace, and that he left it bearing with him the general
esteem of the colonists. True, his second term of office had been in
some ways the antithesis of his first. He had failed to prevent
war, and had made mistakes. But from amid a chaos of confusion and
recrimination, four things stand out clearly: (1) he came upon the
scene too late; (2) he worked earnestly for peace for two years; (3)
the part that he personally took in the war was strikingly successful;
(4) he was scurvily treated by the Colonial Office.

He was the last Viceroy who took an active and distinct share in
the government of the country. Since 1868, the Governors have been
strictly constitutional representatives of a constitutional Sovereign.
They have been without exception honourable and courteous noblemen
or gentlemen. They have almost always left the Colony with the good
wishes of all with whom they have come into contact. They have
occasionally by ta