ARROWNTOWN WILLIAM FOX THE AMERICA
Rumours started to spread which started the next great Gold Rush in Otago.
At the centre of the rumours was a man named Fox who had been noticed selling considerable quantities of gold at the Dunstan, buying flour and tea and tobacco, and disappearing into the bleak hills, mystifying his pursuers. Once, when he found it impossible to shake off his followers, he stopped and pitched his tent and settled down for the night, allowing the men following him to catch up and camp nearby.
In the morning his tent was there and most of the provisions he had bought at Dunstan, but, to the annoyance of his pursuers, Fox had gone, and the serious game of "catching the fox" continued.
And the source of Fox`s Gold? No great river bed such as at Dunstan, but part of a narrow gorge which the Arrow River cuts though the lower ridges of the Crown Range, three or four miles above the junction of the Arrow and the Kawarau Rivers.
Just who first found Gold in the Arrow River is something of a mystery. Fox is usually given the credit, but it may have been Thomas Low, who wrote this about his discovery:
We came across William Fox quite by accident, for when my mate and I were on our way to Rees` station [at what is now Queenstown] to replenish our supplies, we took a rest on a hillside opposite the entrance to a river gorge. There, resting and talking about whether it would be worth a wetting to get a prospect from the gorge, we were amazed to see two men wade out of the gorge waist-deep in water.
We thought to call out to them, but the way they tried to conceal their progress led us to believe that they were up to something in that quiet secluded gorge. We remained in hiding behind some Matagouri bushes until we were sure that they were well out of the way, and then we went up the gorge the way they had come.
The sight which we saw took us completely by surprise, for we thought the two men we saw were the sole occupants of the gorge. But there, spread up the narrow beaches, were about 20 or 30 men panning and cradling for gold. Needless to say, Fox and his companions were none too pleased to see us and in fact threatened to tie us up and keep us prisoners. But as there was plenty of room on the beaches for another two diggers and as we agreed to accept Fox as commissioner and abide by the rules he set, for they were reasonable and the claims big, it was agreed that we should stay and work the claim Fox allotted to us.
No one made any secret of the amount of gold he won, for each of us believed that he had the rich claim. No one had any need to jump another`s claim because the river was so rich, and in any case Fox had forbidden it. We were not even careful about how thoroughly we worked the ground, for we were worried about being rushed, and we worked only the richest parts. In fact, when the rush did come and our party had over 100 lds of gold stacked away, parts of our claims were worked over again more carefully twice in the next year, and as much gold was taken from it again. Many of the diggers who came later were Chinese.
