er
our severe camping out the previous four days.

Although the diggings broke out in McLean's run he had no power to
prevent the land being worked upon, excepting only such portions of it
as were private property, but he discouraged and put obstacles in the
way of the diggers in any form he could, some said because he knew as an
experienced digger himself that they would not pay. Whether this was the
case or not, he might have understood the impossibility of stopping a
gold rush in its infancy, while its value was still an unknown quantity.

Our last stage the following day was for the greater part by one of the
most picturesque valleys I had yet seen. Mr. McLean had made a very fair
road from the Lindis Pass boundary to his home station, which latter was
only some five miles from the diggings, so it was very different
travelling to what we had experienced on the other side. The track first
wound along a deep ravine with rugged precipitous sides, mostly clothed
with evergreen underwood from which huge masses of rock would now and
then emerge, and sometimes overhanging a rushing torrent which had been
swelled by the recent heavy rains and thus enhanced the effect on this
glorious sunny morning. The waterfalls and cascades sparkled in a
hundred colours, wheeling, foaming, and dashing in a mad race amidst
huge rocks, till lost in shadow beneath a precipice or overhanging mass
of variegated bush. The gorge then opened out into a level amphitheatre,
with the river, grown calm and broad, winding peacefully, and surrounded
by the mountains in all their enchanting shades of colour, and the
distant peaks capped with snow.

Then another gorge of more imposing grandeur with a magnificent view
beyond and through it, closed in turn by a sombre pine forest swept by
the river, now grown larger and deeper, dancing and racing like a living
thing in the brilliant sunshine and rare atmosphere of a New Zealand
morning.

How well I remember the whole trip with all its roughness and all its
beauty, its very contrasts no doubt helping to impress it upon the
memory. Such scenes and incidents are difficult to forget, even if one
would, and each and all are as distinct to my mind in almost every
detail at this moment as if I had been with them only yesterday, instead
of more than forty years ago.

CHAPTER XII.

LIFE ON THE GOLD DIGGINGS.

And now I will endeavour to picture my impression of the gold diggings
as they appear