The reports of extensive and rich discoveries of gold in the Otago Province, New Zealand, in 1861, naturally attracted the floating population of Australia to that quarter. In September the escort brought down to Dunedin for shipment a smaller amount of "the precious metal" than had been obtained in any previous month since the goldfield was first proclaimed. Several reasons were given to account for this falling off. One was that the weather had been abnormally cold, and the freezing of the rivers had for a time put a stop to sluicing. Another was that the gold buyers declined to pay more than £3 10s. per ounce, and the majority of the diggers, having come from Ballarat and Bendigo where £4 and £3 18s. 6d. per ounce were paid respectively, refused to send their gold down and were keeping it for an anticipated rise in the price. The _Southern Cross_, however, said that the principal reason why the diggers were not sending their gold forward was the fear of bushrangers. The guard sent with the escort was wholly inadequate in the mountains through which it had to pass, and therefore the diggers declined to entrust their earnings to its care. The _Otago Witness_ pooh-poohed this assertion and declared that there had never yet been a case of bushranging in the colony, and that if a fair price was offered for it by the banks and other gold buyers the gold retained on the diggings would speedily be placed on the market. The bank authorities, on being questioned, said that the New Zealand gold contained a larger proportion of silver than either the Ballarat or Bendigo gold, and was therefore of less value than the gold won on those diggings. The boast of the _Otago Witness_ that there were no bushrangers in New Zealand did not hold good for very long. Henry Beresford Garrett, who was arrested in London on the charge of robbing the Bank of Victoria at Ballarat as already related, and who was convicted in August, 1855, and sentenced to ten years' hard labour, was liberated from the Pentridge Gaol, Melbourne, in August, 1861, on a ticket-of-leave, after having served six years. Early in 1862 he made his appearance as the first bushranger on record in New Zealand. The scene he chose for his operations was the country between the Otago Goldfields and Dunedin. In one day he is reported to have stuck up and robbed no less than twenty-three persons near Gabriel's Gully, now known as the town of Lawrence. His career, however, was short if lively, for he was captured before the end of the year and sent to gaol for eight years.