unhesitating, ungrudging hospitality extended by the rich squatters
to their poorer compatriots was ever abused. I say "in our part,"
because unfortunately, wherever gold is discovered, either in quartz
or riverbed, the good old primitive customs and ways die out of
themselves in a few weeks, and each mammon-seeker looks with
distrust on a stranger. Only fifty or sixty miles from us, as the
crow might fly across the snowy range, where an immense Bush clothes
the banks of the Hokitika river right down to its sand-filled mouth
on the West Coast, the great gold diggings broke out seven or eight
years ago, and changed the face of society in that district in a few
days. _There_ a swagger meant a man who might rob or murder you in
your sleep after you had fed and lodged him; or--under the most
favourable circumstances supposing him to be a "milder mannered
man,"--a "fossicker," who would not hesitate to "jump your claim,"
or hang about when you are prospecting, to watch how much of the
colour you found, and then go off stealthily to return next day at
the head of a "rush" of a thousand diggers.

Even before the famous Maungatapu murders in 1866, swaggers were
looked upon with distrust on the West Coast, and after that date
hardly any one travelled in those parts without carrying a small
revolver in his breast-pocket. Nothing is more tantalising than an
allusion to a circumstance which is not well-known; and as I feel
certain that very few of my readers have ever heard of what may be
called the first great crime committed in the Middle Island, a brief
account of that terrible tragedy may not be out of place. Gold of
course was at the bottom of it, but the canvas-bags full of the
glittering flakes were red with blood by the time they reached the
bank at Nelson. The diggings on the West Coast were only two years
old at that date, and although it was not uncommon for prospecting