was towed inside. The Rona is partially loaded with South Sea Island produce. After the ship was moored Captain Hayes came ashore; he was dressed in white trousers, with a sash round his waist (in lieu of braces), a silk shirt, and a ‘wide-awake hat.’ He proceeded to the nearest hostelry, where he ‘shouted’ for all hands, afterwards making a tour of inspection of the city.” Here he met many old friends from the Otago goldfields, he having four years previously kept a hotel at Fox’s (Arrowtown), the story of his sojourn there being most interestingly told by Robert Gilkison in “Early Days of Central Otago,” who states inter alia, that this bold bad buccaneer had only one ear, the other having been cut off in California for cheating at cards. Be this as it may, it is a matter of history that he sat in with a sky-the-limit poker school when in Hokitika and got cleaned up in no time. The Rona sailed next day.
Despite the fact that the population of Westland was cosmopolitan to a marked degree, it was a law abiding, nay a straight laced, community when compared with that of some goldfields, where it was necessary for every man to carry a revolver, and two-gun men were ever a picturesque (and deadly) menace. There was but little serious crime on the West Coast, a gang of Australian bushrangers certainly, but the vigilance of the police
