The Diggings

THE gold fever claimed easy victims from all classes of society — farmers, lawyers, clerks, artisans, doctors, sailors. All left their common­place tasks and set out with high hopes to labour strenuously and often unsuccessfully at work for which some of them were little fitted. Considering   the   undeveloped   state   of   the country and the suddenness of the gold-rushes, the organisation of law and order at the goldfields was effected with commendable rapidity. The Gold-fields Ordinance of 1858 provided machinery for the setting up of goldfields districts and for their government. What usually happened was that gold was discovered, the fact published, men rushed to stake out claims, a goldfield was proclaimed, . and a Warden appointed to settle disputes and make necessary regulations. Shortly after the first miners, there appeared the storekeeper, who often prospered more than the diggers; and when the field was proved, the banker, giving by his presence the assurance that the field was no ‘ duffer.’ Canvas towns sprang up overnight, and possibly dis­appeared as rapidly at the news of a bigger rush elsewhere. If the field was worked for some time, canvas gave way to corrugated iron; hotels and dance halls were built in large numbers; and later Post Office, Court-house, hospital, churches, and Athenaeum appeared.

Despite the activities of Garrett and Sullivan and their accomplices in Otago and on the West Coast, the New Zealand goldfields were compara­tively free from serious crime, and for this a good deal of credit is due to the Provincial Police, and to the steadying effect of the inclusion among the diggers of many of the original colonists.