Through south Westland, a journey to the Haast and Mount Aspiring, New Zealand . an might arrive at night worthhis £500, and leave the little township next daywithout a penny. And if they played hard, theyworked hard too, and endured hardships andprivations little heard of nowadays. In the endthe successful ones went back to civilization, ortook up land and settled down with wife andfamily. The failures drifted away, leaving a fewold derelicts, whose ties were too long brokento be mended, and the mate they worked withdead and gone. But Ross has gone ahead sincethose days, and gold-mining deman
Through south Westland, a journey to the Haast and Mount Aspiring, New Zealand . an might arrive at night worthhis £500, and leave the little township next daywithout a penny. And if they played hard, theyworked hard too, and endured hardships andprivations little heard of nowadays. In the endthe successful ones went back to civilization, ortook up land and settled down with wife andfamily. The failures drifted away, leaving a fewold derelicts, whose ties were too long brokento be mended, and the mate they worked withdead and gone. But Ross has gone ahead sincethose days, and gold-mining demands all the latestmachinery, and sluicing on a vast scale is carriedon. We came in for a very wet day during ourstay, and I spent it climbing about behind thetown among the old workings, where chasmsyawned whose bottoms were rilled with blackwaters, and where one scrambled over mountainousheaps of broken rock and debris. In all directionsthe hills were gashed and rent by the power ofthe sluicing hose. Here and there, amid blackenedstumps, some forest giant still green held up. WATERS OF WESTLAND. 21 protesting arms to heaven; tangled masses oftree-ferns and creepers still sent out living frondsand tendrils, though pitched headlong down thescrees—everywhere ugliness and ruin: The ruined beauty wasted in a night,The blackened wonder God alone could plan,And builds not twice ! A bitter price to payIs this for progress—beauty swept away. But the ruin and the ugliness are inevitable. Wherethere is gold, all outside beauty must flee awaybefore the digger. The disused workings were adesolate place on a wet afternoon, and brokensheds and rusting machinery depressed one; andas I viewed these things, I sorrowed for the passingof the Forest. Behind me the hills were hiddenin a pall of rain; in front stretched the gold-flatwith a ragged row of poplars on its marshy edge;beyond that again, a blank wall of mist hid thePacific, moaning sullenly on the sand. I wasglad to come in to tea and
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1911
