including Waite himself, attempted to ascend the Buller in the ship’s boat with the object of reaching the spot described by the Maoris, but after four days ‘battling with the current’ the journey was abandoned. On Waite’s return to the river mouth with his companions he learnt that certain Maoris had discovered payable gold in the Waimangaroa, and he was shown a small nugget. Waite immediately embarked for Nelson for the purpose of bringing fresh supplies, and he appears to have experienced rough weather, because sixteen days elapsed before the little craft reached her destination. He placed a number of nuggets in a jeweller’s window at Nelson, and some interest appears to have been excited amongst the people there. In due course Waite returned to the Buller and opened a store there.
“The existence of gold in the Buller had been discovered by Mr. John Rochfort, surveyor, who obtained several small pieces of the precious metal at the Old Diggings in November, 1859. This spot is opposite the site of the wayside accommodation house known at Berlin’s. The Maoris who brought the sample to Collingwood, however, were the first to obtain gold in payable quantities on the West Coast, and from the time of their finding it in 1860 gold was obtained continuously. It is thus abundantly evident that payable gold was got on the West Coast several years before the
