Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/169

from thence he worked his way down the coast, stopping at Akaroa. He lived here with the Maoris for some time, and afterwards went to reside at Little River, where he took out a bush license for splitting shingles and posts and rails. He frequently employed a number of Maoris at this work, in the old style, paying them with slops and other articles of trade. At intervals he went to Christchurch, where he invariably got drunk.

Shortly after the Otago diggings broke out he found his way to them. He had excellent luck at first, but with his habits money was of little use to him, for the faster he made it the quicker he spent it. At the end of a few years the neighbourhood in which he was working was pretty well exhausted, so he started on a prospecting tour into the little-explored back country, accompanied by his mate. They travelled to places that no white man had previously visited, and it was then that Jimmy had the adventure of his life. This was no less than catching a glimpse of a living specimen of the great apteryx, the huge moa bird. One need hardly say that Jimmy’s tale about his meeting with a live moa was much doubted, but to the day of his death he always swore that it was a fact, with such earnestness as left no room to doubt that he himself thoroughly believed that he had seen that great bird, that is supposed to be extinct. Whether he and his mate (who also affirmed the same thing) were suffering from some strange hallucination, or whether they really did see this wonderful creature, will probably ever remain a mystery; but there is still a wide stretch of unexplored country in the county known as the Fiords, and it is possible that in this almost inaccessible region a last specimen of the moa may yet be found. Our informant gives us the tale told to him by Jimmy in almost the same words that were used in relating it:—“We were camped,”