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152
NOTES ON NEW ZEALAND.
out unfortunate they are probably compensated for by others.
A gold field upon which a number of miners are working, each on his own account, or in partnership with others, is a small community governed by a commissioner, who is supported by a body of mounted police. The post of commissioner is no sinecure. He who holds it must be a man cast in a stern mould. Every new find is the signal for a series of desperate disputes, and the commissioner is called on to decide between the rival claims of a crowd of clamorous diggers upon evidence which is often apparently
