PREFACE.
The old days when the title page of a book was almost as good, or at any rate as explanatory, as a preface have departed. Now you may learn nothing from the name. Who has not heard of that agricultural society who sent for “Edgeworths Essay on Bulls,” only to find that the “bulls” were Irish, and principally verbal.
In this work an endeavour has been made—by the free use of old diaries, extracts from newspapers, and personal reminiscences—not merely to show “Banking” under difficulties, but the general life on the goldfields.
The writer would at the outset endeavour to disarm criticism by candidly stating that of pretension to literary merit he has none. Facts are recorded, and for the truthfulness of the narrative the author vouches. “Nought extenuate nor aught set down in malice,” has been the motto pursued throughout.
Many of the anecdotes told are within the memory of several who will read the book.
The extraordinary vicissitudes of travel, the rough way of living, and the hardships that the early pioneers encountered in the early days of the West Coast diggings, have never—at least to the writer’s idea—been fully set forth. In those days, as a rule, people were hand, not head, workers. Now the past is to them but as a dream. The writer of the following pages kept a diary, and the scenes described are therefore presented as they appeared to him at the time.
