BRIGHTER BRITAIN!
Northern New Zealand has two special products, which are peculiar to the country, and found nowhere else. They are kauri timber and kauri-gum. When speaking of Northern New Zealand in these sketches, I do not thereby intend the whole of the North Island, as has been previously explained; I mean that northern part of it which may be more properly designated "The Land of the Kauri."
The kauri grows throughout all that part of the old province of Auckland which lies to the north of S. lat. 37° 30' or 38°. It does not grow naturally anywhere south of the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude, nor, I believe, can it be induced to flourish under cultivation south of its natural boundary line.
The kauri is indigenous to this comparatively small section of New Zealand. It is one of the Coniferæ, or pines, and is named by botanists Dammara Australis. The only tree of similar species that affords a timber nearly resembling the kauri, though not of such good quality, is one that is found in Fiji; the Dammara Vitiensis. It may be as well to mention that kauri and Maori rhyme together, and are pronounced "kowry" and "mowry."[1]
The kauri was first brought into notice by Captain Cook, who, it will be remembered, passed many months in New Zealand altogether, and the greater part of the time in the north. He discovered that kauri was superior to Norway pine, or indeed, to any other wood then known, for spars and topmasts of vessels. Other explorers endorsed his opinion of it, and in 1820 the British Government sent a ship, the Dromedary, to New Zealand, for the purpose of obtaining kauri timber. It was then classed high at Lloyd's.
Subsequently a demand for kauri timber arose in Sydney and elsewhere. Some trade in it was established with the Maoris; and little communities of English sawyers settled here and there along the coast of New Zealand. This was one among other causes that led to the colonization of the country in 1840. Thus the kauri holds a place in history, having had its share in making this our Brighter Britain.
The value of the kauri to New Zealand at large, and to the North in particular, can hardly be overrated. It is an important export, being sent to other parts of the colony, to Australia, the South Sea Islands, and elsewhere. In its own country it is used for every purpose to which timber is applicable. The many other trees of the bush are neglected for the sake of it; while it is more plentiful than any of them. Settlers in other parts of the colony, beyond the limit of the kauri's growth, make use of their native timbers, but lament that the cost of transport prevents them from importing kauri, so much superior is it. Wherever it is necessary to bring timber from a distance, as in comparatively treeless Otago for example, kauri is preferred; though it will have to be brought from further away than totara, miro, or matai, which are cut in southern forests.
One may say that the kauri is to Northern New Zealand what the oak has been to England, and even more. There, houses are built of it almost exclusively; it is used in the construction of vessels, for fencing, furniture, and all the more general purposes. And its valuable resin is the kauri gum of commerce; but that I must speak of separately.
Not alone is the kauri monarch in the forests of New Zealand, but it must rank among the royallest trees the earth produces. It grows, for the most part, in forests sacred to itself, not mixing with the common herd of trees. In this respect other kinds of pine are similar. Also, each distinct tract of kauri bush, or forest, contains trees of a certain uniformity of age, consequently of size. In the aggregate vast tracts are covered with it. The largest forest of kauri is that between the Hokianga and the Kaipara waters, which, I believe, is to be put down at nearly a thousand square miles in extent, bush of a more varied description intervening here and there among it. After it come the kauri forests of Mongonui, Whangaroa, and Coromandel.
There are few experiences more impressive to the feelings than to stand alone in the recesses of a kauri forest. Unlike the character of the mixed bush—the forest where trees of many other kinds are found—the kauri bush is weirdly depressing from its terrible monotony. It is solemn, sombre, and gloomy to the last degree. Yet is there a profound majesty about it that awes one in spite of oneself.
The trees stand closely together, not branching out much till near the top. They cover range and gully, mountain and plain, in unbroken succession. At the base they may girth as much as up to fifty feet. Forty feet of girth is not uncommon, and thirty feet is often the average. They soar up straight to a hundred, a hundred and fifty, even to a hundred and eighty feet before branching, and then their leafy crowns, interlaced together, form a canopy through which daylight hardly penetrates.
The boles of these woodland giants are mostly black and smooth, sometimes covered with twigs, though this chiefly in the smaller trees. Supple-jack, bush-lawyer, mounga, various creeper-ferns with magnificent fronds, and sometimes flowering clematis, swing from trunk to trunk and knit the columns together. Below there is not the thick undergrowth that prevails in the varied bush, but a lighter tangle of shrubs. Ferns, among which several varieties like the maidenhair predominate, grow waist-high in rank luxuriance.
The sublime grandeur of a kauri forest is hardly equalled by anything else of the kind in nature. One seems to stand amid the aisles of a mighty temple, shut out from the world and imprisoned amid endless ranks of tremendous columns. Stillness and silence deepen the profundity of gloom around one. The fiercest gale may be raging overhead, and not a leaf is stirred within the dark coverts; only the faint murmur of the foliage far above betrays what is passing. Of life there is nothing visible. The little fantails, the traveller's friends in the bush, hover around one, and they are all one sees, unless it be, perchance, the rapid flash of a rat running up some trunk, or the scuttling of a kiwi or weka amid the fern.
To get some real notion of what these forests are like let us compare them with English woods. The latter bear the palm of beauty, but the former that of grandeur from their very vastness. The largest wood in England is but the size of one dingle in a kauri forest, and is flat and tame contrasted with the hilly ruggedness of the land here. Again, measure the girth of English beeches, oaks, elms, and ashes. The oldest and best grown woods will not give you an average girth of ten feet. Trees girthing fifteen to twenty feet are rare and singular. What is this to the giant kauri?
If we look at height there is another difference. English trees are remarkable for their limbs and branches. Take these away, and the stick that remains seldom averages more than thirty or forty feet. If it reaches to sixty the tree is regarded as something extraordinary. But the splendid dome of foliage, the beautiful spread of boughs, which is the glory of English oak or chestnut, is forbidden to the kauri. Its magnificence resides solely in its stick, which is more like a factory chimney than anything else. You get an impression of immensity, you feel a veritable pigmy as you walk, mile after mile, among trees whose girth is thirty feet, and whose branches only begin a hundred and thirty feet from the ground; while, every now and then, you come upon some patriarch of fifty feet girth and a hundred and eighty feet, perhaps, of stick.
An assertion has been made, that if the present rate of consumption be kept up, some eighty years will see the end of the kauri forests. This may be true, but I do not think it is. I fancy that it is a calculation made in ignorance of the real extent of the kauri bush. Also, that no true idea was conceived of the enormous bulk of the trees, and the countless number of them to be found far back from the rivers, in the less accessible regions of the bush. I think I might say, with quite as much show of reason, that if the present rate of consumption were even doubled, as it doubtless will be, a century may elapse before economy in cutting kauri need be studied.
When working with parties of the Government Land Survey, I had good opportunities for getting some idea of the stupendous supplies of kauri timber. I once counted forty trees on a measured acre. Of these the smallest had a girth of twenty feet, with a stick of about eighty feet in height; the largest might be about double that. We estimated that these trees would yield a million feet of sawn timber. Of course that is an exceptional instance, but it must be remembered that there are hundreds of square miles of kauri bush in the aggregate.
The annual output of the saw-mills is reckoned to be sixty million feet of sawn kauri timber, the value of which may be roughly put at £300,000. Much of this is used up in the colony; but an increasing export trade, amounting in value to £40,000 or £50,000 per annum, is carried on with Australia, Fiji, and the South Sea Islands. There are some twenty large saw-mills in various parts of the kauri forests, and there are other small ones which supply local demands; together these employ a large number of hands.
The largest mill is that at Te Kopura, on the Wairoa river, some forty-five miles above its outfall into the Kaipara harbour. It can turn out 120,000 feet per week. At Aratapu, higher up the same river, there is another mill, turning out 80,000 feet per week. These mills are working on the outskirts of the great Kaipara-Hokianga forest. Vessels drawing seventeen feet of water can come up the Wairoa to load at them. The mill at Whangaroa, on the east coast, ranks next in point of size, turning out sawn timber to the average annual value of £23,000. At Whangapoua, in Coromandel, are two mills, cutting about 160,000 feet per week between them. The cost of their plant was £25,000. The Whangapoua kauri bush extends over some 30,000 acres.
Sawn kauri is sold at the mills at 9s. 6d. to 11s. 6d. per hundred feet. The high freights cause it to cost 15s. to 17s. in the southern ports, and, I believe, it is sold at about the same in Sydney or the Islands. It would not be easy to say what is the average yield of a tree, the difference being very considerable. Some put it down at 10,000 feet, but I am sure that is an under estimate.
A stick of fifty feet length, and thirty feet in circumference at the base, might be reckoned to yield about 20,000 feet of sawn timber. The value of this would be £100. Deducting £40 as the cost of felling, transporting to the mill, and cutting up, a profit of £60 is left. This is a fair example. When a stick of a hundred and fifty feet, with a girth of forty or fifty feet, is in question, both work and profit are larger, of course.
The stump of one of these titanic trees is no small affair. It is big enough to build a small house upon, if sawn flat. I remember once making one of a party of eight, and dancing a quadrille on the stump of a kauri.
There is a variety of the tree known as the mottled kauri. The wood of this is very curious and beautiful, and fetches a high price for cabinet work. It is not very common, and when a big tree of this kind is come upon, it is a source of great gratification to its owner, for it may yield him £500 or £600 of absolute profit.
Felling big trees with the axe is tremendous labour. Till recently it was the only means employed here. Perhaps you may have to cut five or six feet deep into the tree, in order to reach the heart of it. To do this an enormous gash must be made, so large in fact, that scaffoldings have to be erected within it, to permit the workmen to reach their mark. Only two men can cut at the same gash at a time; but frequent shifts are resorted to, so as to "keep the pot boiling." Now, a saw working between portable engines is more generally employed upon the big trees.
When the great stick has been laid prostrate, with a crash that resounds for miles, and a shock that makes the whole hillside quiver, it is cut into lengths, and roughly squared with long-handled axes. Then comes the process of getting it to the mill, which may possibly be a considerable distance off.
The hilly and rugged character of the land nearly always prevents anything like a tramway system being adopted; and, for a long time, trees were only cut where they could be readily run down into the water. But a system has been introduced, by an American bushman, I believe, which is now generally used, and by means of which the largest trees can be got out anywhere in this country of heights and hollows.
The logs are easily collected in the bottom of the nearest gully, as they can be readily sent down the sides of the ranges by means of screw-jacks, rollers and slides. When the sides of the gully have been denuded of their timber, and a huge collection of logs lies piled in the bottom, preparation is made to further their descent to the river. A dam is built right across the ravine below the logs, constructed of timber, earth, stones, and whatever material comes handiest.
When the winter rains commence, the first day or two of continued downpour causes every little water-course to swell into a foaming torrent. The stream in the gully pours down a great volume of water, which, checked by the dam, spreads out behind it into a broad lake that fills all the lower ground. In this flood the mighty logs are borne up, and float upon its surface.
The sides of the dam, which is angularly shaped, are chiefly supported by logs set up endways as buttresses upon the lower side. To these supports ropes are attached, which are carried up the hillsides out of reach of the water, above the level of the swollen flood pent in by the dam. Then men and horses, or bullocks, haul with sudden and united effort upon the ropes; the chief supports are torn away; the dam breaks down in various places; the waters overflow and stream through the breaches. Or, sometimes, the dam is flushed by breaching it with gunpowder or dynamite. Soon the mass of water moves with irresistible force, breaking down what is left of the dam and sweeping everything before it. Then, in mighty volume, it rushes down the gully, bearing onward with it the great collection of massive logs that it has floated. Sometimes the first flush carries the timber down to the open river. Sometimes the entire process has to be repeated more than once or twice, if the distance be long, or the nature of the ground necessitate it.
When they fall into the river, or inlet of the sea, as the case may be, the logs are brought up by booms ready to receive them. They are then chained together in rafts and floated down to the mill, which, of course, gives upon the water-highway. Often such a flush will constitute a whole year's work, or longer; and will provide a supply of raw material for the saw-mill that will last it as long. But exactly the same process may be practically and profitably carried out for only a few logs, where the gully is not large, and not too far from the river.
Our own special little community are pioneer farmers, of course, and we do not employ ourselves in this way. Still, some of us have in former years acted the part of lumberers, or bushmen proper, when we were working at any jobs that turned up. The work we have is heavy enough in all conscience, but it is light compared to the tremendous labour that bushmen have to get through.
The lowest rate of wages for bushmen is 25s. per week, and all found. But the rate varies, better men getting better wages, the paucity of hands affecting the scale, and strikes for more pay occurring sometimes. I have known the hands of a saw-mill to get as much as seven or nine shillings per day.
Usually there are comfortable barracks for the men employed at a mill; but, when working up in the bush, these are not always available, and the workmen are lodged in huts, or shanties, upon the ground, being in much the same case as we are in our shanty. Their employers supply them with all necessaries, and have to be pretty careful in this respect, as your bushman will not work unless he gets tucker according to a very liberal scale. Beef, mutton and pork, bread, potatoes, kumera and tea he gets in unlimited quantities, besides various other items that need not be catalogued.
Most of our produce is taken by the saw-mills at the market-price. We have even sent them our fat steers and wethers, instead of shipping them to Auckland; and one year we made a good thing by growing cabbages and fresh vegetables for the bushmen. Like English colliers, they look to have the best food going; and, what is more, they get it. Yet it must be remembered that the bushman's work is terribly hard. It needs the employment of all the physical strength and vigour a man has to bestow, and this must be used with a continued pertinacity that is excessively trying.
Kauri-gum—or Kapia, as the Maoris call it—which has been just alluded to, is another peculiar product of this northern extremity of New Zealand. It is not of any practical service to the colonists, as the timber of the tree which produces it is, but it is an export of considerably greater value. It is the solidified sap, or resin of the kauri, but not in a fresh form; it is that resin in a hardened condition found buried in the ground.
There are tracts of country, known as gum-fields, in which the kauri-gum is to be dug up most plentifully. These places are stretches of bleak moorland for the most part, though not invariably. The soil in them consists very much of a heavy yellow clay, loose and friable near the surface. It is impregnated with fragments and particles of gum, which may be found in numerous spots to occur in layers and collections of larger pieces, varying in size up to blocks the size of a man's body. It is not usual to collect pieces smaller than the closed fist—minuter fragments not being considered remunerative to the digger.
The gum is found just below the surface of the ground, and sometimes down to the depth of six or eight feet. The finding of it, collecting and bringing to market, affords a sufficiently profitable occupation to have constituted a distinct class of men, who go by the name of gum-diggers.
Gum-fields are poor lands usually, though some are adapted for settlement. The country lying between Riverhead, Helensville, and Ararimu, which I described when relating our journey up-country, is a fair example of a gum-field. But gum is also found in the kauri forests, round the roots of the trees, especially of old, partly decayed, or wholly dead specimens. It is also to be found pretty generally throughout all the land of the kauri. Of course it cannot be discovered everywhere, or in all soils, but traces of it will be apparent somewhere in any single square mile; and in every sort of land throughout the limit of the kauri's growth, gum will be found here and there. Thus, on our farm and in the surrounding bush, although these are distinctly not gum-lands, there are little patches of ground, of a few acres in extent, whence we have got a ton or two of gum at times.
It is worthy of remark that the fresh resin of the living trees is not of any commercial value. Great masses of gum are often found in forks and clefts of the trees, and about the roots; but of this, only a little of the latter is generally worth anything, the rest being soft and in a condition that renders it valueless. It seems that the gum must be buried underground for a considerable time, an unknown term of years, before it attains the degree of hardness and other qualities that merchants require.
I have been told that the Maoris collect the soft, fresh gum and bury it, so that they or their descendants may dig it up again after sufficient time has elapsed for it to undergo the requisite changes. Whether this is so or not I am unable to say of my personal knowledge. I have never met with any instance of the kind, and have strong doubts as to the forecasting care with which such a tale credits the Maoris. They are certainly not given to providing for a distant future in a general way.
It would seem that the deposits of gum in the soil are all that remains of ancient kauri forests. These must once have covered the open fern-lands, where no trace of them now remains, except rich gum-holes here and there. It would seem that the kauri had, in the course of ages, exhausted the soil on which they grew, of constituents necessary to their growth, and had then naturally died out in such localities. The existing forests are, of course, making new deposits, which will some day be available. Felling the trees necessarily causes a diminution of this, but possibly some means may yet be discovered of rendering the fresh, soft gum equally useful with the semi-fossil kind.
Kauri-gum is very like amber in general appearance, and is similar to it in chemical characteristics; but it is much more brittle, and hence is not of such value for ornaments. Many colonists amuse themselves with carving and polishing trinkets of gum, but they chip too readily to permit of their ever being of value. Kauri-gum has sometimes been fraudulently substituted for amber, but the better specimens of the latter have a yellow tint which is seldom seen in the New Zealand product. Our gum exists of various shades of brown and sherry-colour, both clear and clouded. The most highly-prized variety is colourless like glass, or nearly so, and some is found almost black, not unlike jet. Flies, fragments of moss, and so on, are occasionally seen embedded in it.
Kauri-gum was first brought into notice at the time of the first colonization, in 1840 and 1841. It was then collected chiefly by Maoris, and was sold by them to the store-keepers. Its value at that time was only £5 or £6 per ton; and about a hundred tons was all the annual export for some years.
Since then, however, an increasing demand for it arose in the United States. New York and Boston now take two-thirds of all the gum exported; and of what is sent home to England the greater part is re-shipped thence to American ports. The number of gum-diggers regularly employed is supposed to have exceeded four thousand at times; now they average some two thousand altogether. The amount of the export steadily increased from the first, until, in 1870-71-72, it reached to some fifteen thousand tons for the three years, valued at half a million sterling.
Subsequent to this there was very considerable falling off in the export. The number of diggers decreased, fields were declared worked out, and it was thought that the supplies were exhausted. But after a year or two, it was discovered that gum existed in many places where its presence had been hitherto unsuspected; and it was also made clear that large deposits were often underlying the two or three feet of surface-soil previously worked, on the fields it was thought were exhausted.
A fresh impulse was given to gum-digging, and the amount of the export rose again. In 1878, it stood at 3410 tons; in 1879, at 3247 tons; in 1880, as much as 5500 tons was shipped, valued at £236,500. From 1853 to 1880 inclusive, about 70,000 tons were sent out, export value £2,100,000. It would thus seem that kauri-gum is more plentiful now than ever, while its average value has risen to £43 per ton.
Some American scientist has given it as his opinion that the kauri-gum exported from 1840 to 1880 must have required a forest-growth of ten thousand years to have produced it; but then we know that scientists will go making these rash assertions on the very vaguest premises. How long ago the kauri forests that covered the now open fern-lands died out, it would be hard to say. And how long they had stood before that is an equally difficult problem to solve. Of the trees in the forests now standing we can easily calculate the age. Some of them were already big trees at the period when Julius Cæsar was colonizing the other Britain. Doubtless the forests here were pretty much what they are to-day, when Norman and Saxon and Dane were fighting for the throne.
Gum-diggers receive an all-round price for the gum they bring down to the stores, which fluctuates somewhat in amount. It usually averages about £30 a ton. Before reaching its final market, the gum is cleaned, picked, and carefully assorted and re-assorted into six or eight different classes. The very best of these has been known to sell at £144 per ton in New York; the others at varying prices down to £25 or £20 for the lowest class. The average price is now £43 per ton.
The use to which kauri-gum is put is the manufacture of varnish. At least this is the general theory. It is made into a varnish much resembling that of copal; and gum copal, as the reader will remember, is the product of the Hymenea verrucosa of tropical Eastern Africa, where it is dug from the ground much as kauri-gum is here.
Varnish-making is the assigned use of kauri-gum, but there is a dark suspicion afloat in our Brighter Britain that this is not the only nor the chief one. It is hinted that the Yankees use it to adulterate something or other with, or to fix up some compound of a wholly different kind. I will not say that O'Gaygun is solely responsible for this insinuation, but he certainly fosters it in every way he can.
In the mind of our Milesian ally there exists a profound belief that the principal object in life of an American is to invent new and profitable ways of adulteration, or to discover means of perfecting colossal shams, and thereby defrauding a guileless public, such as ourselves.
For my own part, I disagree with O'Gaygun on this point. Experience has led me to believe that the English manufacturer and trader stand unrivalled in all the arts of adulteration. The Yankee is a babe compared to them at this game. In fact, so far as exports are concerned, it would seem as if the British merchant could not help a greater or lesser measure of chicanery. What the Yankee sends to us is generally good; this in other matters besides hardware.
But O'Gaygun's views are warped, and his conclusions are mainly drawn from the remembrance of one incident, the tale of which he is never weary of narrating.
It seems that, shortly before he came out to New Zealand, O'Gaygun was concerned with others in the exportation from Ireland to America of a certain mineral. It was a heavy, white, glistening earth, which I take to have been witherite, or carbonate of baryta.
This stuff was sold ostensibly for paint-making, and certain Yankee merchants bought up all they could of it. Shipload after shipload went to America, and the Irish speculators were in high glee as the demand for it increased; although such a quantity had been shipped as would have sufficed to have whitewashed the entire two continents.
At last the real destination of the mineral came to light. It was powdered and mixed with flour, which America was then exporting largely to Europe. It made the finest flours heavier, and made seconds rank as first-class. So, according to O'Gaygun, hundreds and thousands of tons of this witherite were eaten by cheated Europe in the form of bread. A whole mountain, so he says, was shipped to the land of the Stars and Stripes; and as much as was sent came back to Europe as flour.
When the thing was blown upon, of course, the export gradually ceased. And I believe that O'Gaygun and his associates were blamed for participation in the fraud. Therefore he, poor, deluded Irishman, has ever since held the Yankee to be of very nature iniquitous in all his dealings. Well, let us hope that kauri-gum is, after all, only an innocent varnish basis, as is generally stated, and that it is not eaten as pork or beans or anything by a too-confiding British public.
The gum-diggers of Northern New Zealand are a peculiar body of nomads. They are recruited from every nation, and from every rank of society, and, like the communities gathered together on Australian or Californian gold-fields, present a strange medley of opposites.
Among them one may come across men who are graduates of the universities. One may find members of noble houses, representatives of historic names; nay, twice I have met men born to titles gum-digging. Then one may find diggers who should belong to professions they have abandoned—civil, military, learned, artistic. Clerks, accountants, secretaries, and shopmen swell the ranks of our Bohemian army. There are guileless peasants, natives of Norfolk or Devon, France or Germany, perhaps; and there are runaway sailors, ex-convicts, tinkers, tailors, printers' devils, pirates, rowdies, negroes, Kanakas, Maoris, Chinamen; a collection of gentlemen educated to every pursuit under the sun, in fact.
Throughout all this heterogeneous assemblage there exists entire equality, but little fraternization. Each man is as good as his fellow; there is no recognized line of demarcation between man and man. Yet gum-diggers are not gregarious as a rule; they are too jealous, each of another's possible luck, to admit of general brotherhood. Generally little gangs associate together and work in company; but it is rare that they do so on communistic principles. More often, each member of the gang works entirely for his own hand, though they may have food and so on in common.
There is precious little feeling of caste, or prejudice on account of different social ranks, remaining to us in this free land. What there is, however, places gum-diggers, as a class, on the bottommost level of society. Not that even that distinction conveys any slight upon individual gum-diggers; it is more a sort of abstract principle, than anything real or practical.
Still, they are sneered at occasionally by other colonists. It is a favourite theory that, if you should see some particularly haughty swell come out with all the pomp of a first-class passage, some grandiose creature of the scapegrace-fine-gentleman sort, with such airs and dignity as befit a man who feels that the colony was made for him, and not he for the colony, you may chuckle over his probable descent to gum-digging very soon. You have to get out of his lordly path while the air of the quarter-deck is round him, feeling that this humble country is only too much honoured by his mere presence in it. But, in a few months' time, you come across him on the gum-field, in ankle-jacks and ragged shirt, picking up a scanty living. He is Captain Gorgeous Dashabout no longer.
There is a certain charm about gum-digging, particularly to people of unsettled and gypsy-like disposition. You have no boss. You can do as you like; work when you like, and how you like; and lie on your back when it pleases you to do so, without fear of being rowed at by any one. Moreover, with ordinary luck, you can make as good wages as by working on a farm, and that with less actual toil, though possibly some additional hardship.
Gum-diggers must be equipped as lightly as possible. It is commonly said that a blanket, a spade, a gum-spear, a knife, a hatchet, a billy, a pipe, some provisions and tobacco, together with the clothes he stands in, constitute all that a gum-digger needs in the way of outfit. He really cannot afford to possess much more, for he must hump all his belongings on his own back, over mountain and dale, forest and morass. This is one reason why small parties associate together, besides for company. They can then manage to carry a better sufficiency of things with them from camp to camp.
Where proximity to a settlement, a road, or a river permits of it, it is possible for gum-diggers to make their camps pretty comfortable. Often it is not necessary to move camp for months at a time, when the surrounding field is pretty rich in gum-holes. But they are not a provident class, seldom caring for anything beyond the present moment.
The occupation is simplicity itself. Once the prospecting has been accomplished and the district determined on, the party move to it as best they can. Nearly always there is a long tramp through the wilds, with the necessaries on back and shoulders. Then a camp is formed in some favourable spot near a stream; a rude hut is constructed of such material as is at hand; and a store of firewood is cut.
For work, each man straggles about all day by himself, with his spear and spade and sack. He tries every likely looking place with the spear, which is simply an iron rod, sharp at one end, and with a wooden handle at the other. When the end of the spear touches buried gum, there is a peculiar clip or "feel," which the digger knows. Then he digs out the gum, fills his sack, and carries it to camp, continuing to work the same spot as long as it yields anything, when he goes on to look for another. In the evenings he scrapes and cleans the day's take with his knife.
Sometimes a digger will not get a shilling's worth of gum in a whole week's work; sometimes he will find five or six pounds' worth in an hour. Generally speaking, and taking one week with another, he may earn £2 to £4 a week. When enough has been collected and scraped it is carried down to the nearest bush-store or settlement, where it is at once sold. Provisions are bought, and the surplus may be banked, though, in nine cases out of ten, it goes in a "lush up." Some gum-diggers save till they can get down to Auckland, and then they have a high old time of it as long as the money lasts.
It will be seen how this kind of life appeals to the ne'er-do-well. Luck and chance are elements in it; and it is a free, roving, devil-may-care existence. Hence it is that scapegraces take to it so kindly, and prefer its risks and manifest hardships to the steady work of farm-labourers or bushmen.
Gum-diggers seldom make much money. They get a living, and that is about all. Now and then they may do better, but it only results in a "burst." Yet gum-digging has often been a great assistance to settlers. We have taken to it at times, in order to raise a little ready money, when the farm was not paying. Many a small, needy settler has found it a resource to stave off ruin. To energetic and industrious men it offers good wages on the whole, and, as a temporary thing, many such have taken advantage of it.
There are even men among the regular gum-diggers who are superior to their class. These may save all they make, till they have enough to start a small pioneer-farm, or to set up in some handicraft. Thus, in spite of the acknowledged evil repute of the gum-digger, there will be and are, in our Brighter Britain, comfortable homes, whose proprietors will tell you that they are founded and built upon kauri-gum, so to speak.