Page:Charleston • Irwin Faris • (1941).pdf/208

Laurenson lost his life while fishing from the rocks at Little Beach. His companions, William Harper and Duncan Johnson, received the Royal Humane Society’s certificate for their endeavours to rescue him.

Butterworth Bros. had a few tables in Broomielaw Creek; and Messrs. S. Turner, M. Sullivan, W. Ferguson, and T. Enright had tables in Argyle Creek.

Several experiments have been made in New Zealand to extract from sea-water the gold held in solution, and many castles-in-the-air built upon the possibility of the process proving profitable; so far such castles are still in the air. Many old-timers pictured the sea-bed near to river-mouths as being a golden carpet that but required to be shaken, or that fabulously rich reefs existed there, from which the constant action of the tides ground gold and cast it ashore; they had vivid imaginations, these old-time picture builders.

Gold Dredges: The idea of dredging for gold originated in New Zealand, also the idea of working dredges by electric-power. The first gold-dredge was built and operated by a Chinaman, Sew Hoy, of Dunedin. It was on the Shotover River, at Wakatipu. In 1906 there were 40 dredges working on the West Coast, and their returns for the financial year 1905-1906 amounted to £103,277/17/4. To-day the only really large returns on the Coast are from dredges, which work as much ground as could hundreds of men in the same time by the old methods. Mechanical inventions are very labour-saving. Turbine engines generate up to 300,000 horse-power—three million times the energy of a man, on an eight-hour basis.

There is not, nor has there been, any dredging around Charleston.

There were not any Chinese residents about Charleston, though the Warden’s report of 1884 records the arrival of thirty from Inangahua, also that “they soon left—dis-heartened.” Elsewhere on the Coast a fair number engaged in mining, and a goodly sprinkling still remain, eking out a living by re-washing the white man’s leavings. They were a wily race. An old tale goes that on one of the first railways on the Coast, two arrived at the station and were carrying