The gum spear is a four-sided rod of steel, about four feet long, and pointed at one end. It looks very like a fencing foil, with a handle like a spade stuck in the end of it, instead of a hilt. If the field is a new one, or has been but little worked, this instrument is brought into use, and with it the gumdigger probes the ground in different directions, until he strikes a piece of gum, which, if at all experienced, he can tell at once from a stone, root, or other substance. He then digs it up, puts it in the bag, and recommences spearing. An old observing hand generally does a good deal less spearing than a new chum, but a good deal more putting in the bag. When a field has been dug over two or three times, as most of them have been now, the big lumps have nearly all been removed, and the method then adopted is to dig in the most likely places, on the chance of turning up gum with the earth. Here the observing digger again gets the pull, for instead of digging a patch right out as many do, he digs a spitful here and a spitful there, and generally manages to turn up gum.
My theory is, that by minutely examining the places where gum is turned up, and comparing it with the surrounding ground, the wide-awake ones have discovered something or other—I don't in the least know what—which indicates to them the most likely places to dig. Anyway, it is a fact that some gumdiggers earn their two and three pounds a week, while others working equally hard, if not harder, in the field, can scarcely pay their "tucker" bill.
Group of Tree-Gummers under Kauri.
Gum Scraping.
After the gum has been dug up, it has to be scraped, and this is generally done by the gumdigger before he offers it for sale. If an industrious man, his evenings are usually spent at this tedious work; and the more successful his day's digging, the more scraping lies before him in the evening, and it is considered a good ten hours' work to scrape a hundredweight of gum. When it is thoroughly scraped, it is easy to see the quality, and it is then sorted into boxes. The rarest kind is quite transparent and resembles lumps of glass; the next in order, is cloudy in places, yellowish looking, and very like amber, though much more brittle; some again is all cloudy, and the commonest sort of all is almost opaque. The clearer it is the higher its value, and the price for the first class, which is used in the manufacture of copal varnishes, ranges from about £70 to £80 a ton, according as the market is over or under stocked.
Gum Scraper's Knife, constructed so that
blade can be replaced when worn out.
Very pretty ornaments can be cut with a pen-knife out of Kauri gum, the surface of which may be afterwards easily polished by being rubbed with a piece of flannel soaked in kerosine oil. In most of the gumdiggers' huts (or whares, as they are called), and in settlers' houses in gumdigging districts, are to be found specimens of amateur gum-carving, among which, hearts are by far the most popular subject. I have seen flat hearts with sharp edges, rounded hearts, lob-sided hearts, elongated hearts, and many other varieties of Kauri gum hearts, which, though doubtless greatly admired by the personal friends of the carvers, could not be said to possess any commercial value. The material is too fragile for elaborate and artistic designs to be attempted, and no trade of any extent in Kauri gum carvings is pushed in the colony.