As we proceed to make the dispositions which secure to us that which we have already named "O'Gaygun's Claim," the row and racket around rings fiercer over the mountain side. Parties of men are arriving every moment on the ground, and proceeding at once to map out rock and bush into squares and parallelograms, and to peg out their several claims. With the prospectors' claim for centre and nucleus, the area of the occupied ground momentarily increases. Above, around, below, we are hemmed in by earth-hungry gold-seekers, who each and all are greedy as starved tigers for their prey.
Not without many disputes is the work accomplished. Oath and remonstrance, angry quarrelling and bandying of words soon transform that peaceful fastness of nature into a pandemonium of humanity; and words give place to blows, as boundaries are fixed, and claims measured off. Fierce fights are waged over many an inch and yard of ground. The heated blood of the gold-seeker brooks little opposition, and I fear that even revolvers and knives are shown, if not used, between rival claimants.
Yet the hot fury of the rush subsides after a time, and each party proceeds to investigate what authority allows it, and to reconcile divisions with its neighbours. Fires are built and camps are formed, for no one dare leave his claim unoccupied, and preparations are made for a night more confused and uncomfortable than those previously spent at the Warden's camp.
Next day the work commences. The Warden and his aids register the claims and their respective owners. Parties are told off to cut and construct a road. Miners begin to build up huts and habitations, and to bring up from the river their swags, provisions, and tools. Trees fall beneath the axe; rocks are shattered and the ground disturbed with pick and spade; while pounding and panning, assaying and testing goes on vigorously. For no one knows exactly how the reefs will run, or where the richest stone will be found. Nor can that be more than conjectured until tunnelling has been carried to some depth. Most of the claims will prove abortive and valueless; only a few will yield paying quantities of gold; only one or two, perhaps, will bring wealth to their owners. We work and hope.
Three months later, what have been the results, and what are the prospects? I stand at the door of the rude hut we live in, and look abroad over the gold-field, pondering. It is evening, a memorable evening for us, as will presently appear. But we are depressed and down-spirited, for luck has not been with us. "O'Gaygun's Claim" is apparently one of the blankest of blanks in the lottery of the gold-field.
What a difference is apparent in the scene around from that it presented three months ago, when we rode here in wild excitement and hot haste. The grand and lonely Gorge is now populous with life. Trees have fallen beneath the axe, and even their stumps have altogether disappeared over a great extent. The wide hill-side has been riven and torn and excavated by pick and spade, and gaping tunnels yawn here and there. Houses and huts and tents have risen all around, and a rough young town now hangs upon the mountain's shoulder.
Newness and rawness and crudity are prevailing features of the place, yet still it begins to look like the abode and workshop of civilized men. Stores and hotels, primitive but encouraging, hang out their signs to view; and a road, rough but practicable, winds down across the lower ground to Paeroa, the river landing-place, where, too, another township is being nursed into existence. Down below a couple of crushing-mills are already set up and hard at work, belching forth volumes of smoke, that almost hides from my view the turbid, muddy waters of the creek in the gully, as it rolls furiously along. The thunder and thud of the batteries, the jarring and whirring of machinery, the bustle and stir of active and unceasing toil, reverberate with noisy clamour among the rocks, and proclaim that this stronghold of wild nature has been captured and occupied by man.
We four chums have not done well; indeed, we have done very badly. We have prospected our claim in all directions, but without success, and are now sinking a tunnel deep into the hill-side, in hopes of striking the reef that ought, we think, to run in a certain direction from where its upper levels are being successfully quarried in the prospectors' claim above us. We have stuck to the claim so far, urged by some fanciful belief not to give it up, and it bids fair to ruin us. Our funds are quite exhausted, and in another week we shall be compelled to give up the claim, to take work on wages here or at Grahamstown, and so raise means to get ourselves back to the Kaipara.