Chapter XIII.
The Superintendency of Mr. Samuel Bealey.
March, 1863–May, 1866.
The West Coast Gold Fields—Opening of first Railway and first Telegraph Line in Canterbury—the Main South Railway, and other public works.
After the resignation of Mr. Moorhouse, there was some hesitation about the nomination of a successor; there were practically two parties at the time, the Moorhouse party and the FitzGerald party, fairly equally matched. Mr. FitzGerald would have been willing to accept another term of office, but declined to risk a contested election. A requisition was presented to Mr. Robert Wilkin, the President of the Agricultural and Pastoral Association, inviting him to announce himself a candidate for the Superintendency, but on his refusal, Mr. Samuel Bealey, who had headed the requisition to Mr. Wilkin, was invited to stand for election, and on March 5, 1863, was returned unopposed. It was early in Mr. Bealey’s superintendency that the vague rumours of the discovery of gold on the West Coast began to take definite shape. Though not perhaps strictly a part of the story of Christchurch, the gold rush to the West Coast during 1864 and the succeeding years, was so intimately associated with the city, that some reference to it is unavoidable.
To the early settlers, the West Coast of the South
