On a strip of sand-bank between the dank bush and the bar-bound mouth of the Hokitika river a mushroom city sprang up, starting into a bustling life of cheerful rashness and great expectations.  In 1864 a few tents were pitched on the place; in 1865 one of the largest towns in New Zealand was to be seen.  Wood and canvas were the building materials—­the wood unseasoned pine, smelling fresh and resinous at first, anon shrinking, warping, and entailing cracked walls, creaking doors, and rattling window-sashes.  Every second building was a grog-shanty, where liquor, more or less fiery, was retailed at a shilling a glass, and the traveller might hire a blanket and a soft plank on the floor for three shillings a night.  Under a rainfall of more than 100 inches a year, tracks became sloughs before they could be turned into streets and roads.  All the rivers on the coast were bar-bound.  Food and supplies came by sea, and many were the coasting-craft which broke their backs crossing the bars, or which ended their working-life on shoals.  Yet when hundreds of adventurers were willing to pay L5 apiece for the twelve hours’ passage from Nelson, high rates of insurance did not deter ship-owners.  River floods joined the surf in making difficulties.  Eligible town sections bought at speculative prices were sometimes washed out to sea, and a river now runs over the first site of the prosperous town of Westport.

It was striking to note how quickly things settled down into a very tolerable kind of rough order.  Among the diggers themselves there was little crime or even violence.  It is true that a Greymouth storekeeper when asked “How’s trade?” concisely pictured a temporary stagnation by gloomily remarking, “There ain’t bin a fight for a week!” But an occasional bout of fisticuffs and a good deal of drinking and gambling, were about the worst sins of the gold-seekers.  Any one who objected to be saluted as “mate!” or who was crazy enough to dream of wearing a long black coat or a tall black hat, would find life harassing at the diggings.  But, at any rate, in New Zealand diggers did not use revolvers with the playful frequency of the Californians of Mr. Bret Harte.  Nor did they shoe the horse of their first Member of Parliament with gold, or do a variety of the odd things done in Australian gold-fields.  They laughed heartily when the Canterbury Provincial Government sent over the Alps an escort of strapping mounted policemen, armed to the teeth, to carry away gold securely in a bullet-proof cart.  They preferred to send their gold away in peaceful coasting steamers.  When, in 1867, one or two Irish rows were dignified with the title of Fenian Riots, and a company of militia were sent down from their more serious Maori work in the North Island to restore order in Hokitika, they encountered nothing more dangerous than a hospitality too lavish even for their powers of absorption.  One gang of bushrangers, and one only, ever disturbed the coast.  The four ruffians who composed it