From Banks Peninsula on the east of the Middle Island to the Peninsula of Taranaki on the west and White Island on the east of the North Island, the two "isles shivered and shook like a man in a mortal affright." The plains gaped, the mountains reverberated to the crash of great masses of rock thundering down into their valleys, and for nearly a month from the time of the first tremor this whole area was full of diminishing unrest. Most of the houses in the Wellington district were built of wood, though not a few were of brick, and it was discovered that those of wood which were built upon a brick foundation resisted the shocks better than those where only one of these materials had been used. Wellington suffered most, losing some sixteen thousand pounds' worth of property, while the fall of the ordnance store there buried in its ruins Sergeant Lovell and his two children.[65] This was bad enough; but, as many of us know, it takes more than an earthquake to drive people from the land in which they have made their home. So most folk stayed where they were, and a shock of a more pleasurable kind presently confirmed them in their judgment. This was nothing less than the discovery of gold. Men rejoiced, because they knew that, with such a magnet, it would not be long ere the colony attracted to her shores the increased population which she required for her better development. There was reason to rejoice over the finding of gold at home, the more because, when news arrived of the Californian discoveries in 1849, no fewer than a thousand colonists had emigrated thither from New Zealand, whence so many able-bodied men could ill be spared. Two years later came the story of the marvellous finds in the river-beds of New South Wales and the gullies of Victoria, and the young colony suffered a further drain of her stalwarts. Many intending immigrants, too, had shifted their helm and, instead of keeping a course for Maoriland, steered for one or other of the gold-bearing colonies. So people were heartily glad from every point of view when Mr. Charles Ring in 1852 found unmistakable traces of gold at Coromandel, forty miles north of Auckland. The Coromandel territory belonged to old Te Tanewha, or "Hooknose," the contemporary of Captain Cook; and Lieutenant-Colonel Wynyard, Acting Governor, would allow no invasion of his land without his permission. Old Hookinoë, as he pronounced his nickname, proved most gracious in the matter of cheap licences; but his land was soon exhausted, and his neighbour, Taraia, positively refused to allow either digging or prospecting. Five years later gold was discovered in paying quantities at Collingwood, in the Nelson Province, and four years after that there was a further find at Gabriel's Gully, Otago; but it was not until June, 1862, that Coromandel, where the metal had been originally unearthed, was declared available as a goldfield.