As the morning wore on, I came near seeing something of more serious crime than that for which these “runners” were convicted. “Sticking-up,” as highway robbery is called in the colonies, has always been common in Australia and New Zealand, but of late the bush-rangers, deserting their old tactics, have commenced to murder as well as rob. In three months of 1866, no less than fifty or sixty murders took place in the South Island of New Zealand, all of them committed, it was believed, by a gang known as “The Thugs.” Mr. George Dobson, the government surveyor, was murdered near Hokitika in May, but it was not till November that the gang was broken up by the police and volunteers. Levy, Kelly, and Burgess, three of the most notorious of the villains, were on their trial at Hokitika while I was there, and Sullivan, also a member of the band, who had been taken at Nelson, had volunteered to give evidence against them. Sullivan was to come by steamer from the North, without touching at The Buller or The Grey; and when the ship was signaled, the excitement of the population became considerable, the diggers asserting that Sullivan was not only the basest, but the most guilty of all the gang. As the vessel ran across the bar and into the bay, the police were marched down to the landing-place, and a yelling crowd surrounded them, threatening to lynch the informer. When the steamer came alongside the wharf, Sullivan was not to be seen, and it was soon discovered that he had been landed in a whale-boat upon the outer beach. Off rushed the crowd to intercept the party in the town; but they found the jail gates already shut and barred. It was hard to say whether it was for Thuggism or for turning Queen‘s evidence that Sullivan was to be lynched: crime is looked at here as leniently as it is in Texas. I once met a man who had been a coroner at one of the digging towns, who, talking of “old times,” said, quietly enough: “Oh, yes, plenty of work; we used to _make_ a good deal of it. You see I was paid by fees, so I used generally to manage to hold four or five inquests on each body. Awful rogues my assistants were: I shouldn‘t like to have some of those men‘s sins to answer for.” The Gold Coast Police Force, which has been formed to put a stop to Thuggism and bush-ranging, is a splendid body of cavalry, about which many good stories are told. One digger said to me: “Seen our policemen? We don‘t have no _younger sons_ of British peers among ’em.” Another account says that none but members of the older English universities are admitted to the force.