James Mackay's Explorations.

In 1860 a great deal of arduous exploration work was done by James Mackay, of Nelson, afterwards a high officer of the Native Department, for many years in the North Island. We saw much of him in Auckland in the ‘eighties and ‘nineties. His summary of his adventures, written at my request, is a little Iliad of endeavour and endurance to one who can read between the lines and fill in the local colour of weather stress and hard travelling and semi-starvation. After recounting his explorations between 1855 and 1860, he described as follows his work between the Buller sources and the Grey River:—

“In 1860 I travelled from Nelson to the Grey by way of the Upper Buller, Devil's Grip, Tiraumea, Matakitaki, Maruia, and Grey River, to what is now Greymouth. I had Alexander Mackay and Frank Flowers (one of my sheep station hands) and three Maoris. We ran out of food by the time we reached Maruia Plains, and my cousin and Flowers returned to Nelson.

“Where feathery ferns and moss have been
From long-forgotten centuries.”

I and the three Maoris kept on; we were forty-eight hours once with only one woodhen to eat between the four of us. We blazed the present line of coach road through the bush from the Upper Buller to the Grey River. On my return to Nelson the Provincial Government gave me £150 for this service. I purchased the seven and a half million acres of Westland for £300, and 14,500 acres of Native reserves.”