How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
This was a gold town, after all, new-built between jungle and surf at the southernmost edge of the civilized world, and he had not expected luxury (I.1.7).
On Moody's first evening in Hokitika, he definitely spends a lot of time reflecting on how different his new environment is from England or Scotland. His descriptions and observations make it sound like he felt he was roughing it quite a bit.
Quote #2
It was true that his mental conception of the New Zealand diggings was extremely imprecise, informed chiefly by sketches of the California goldfields—long cabins, flat-bottomed valleys, wagons in the dust—and a dim sense (he did not know from where) that the colony was somehow the shadow of the British Isles, the unformed, savage obverse of the Empire's seat and heart. He had been surprised, upon rounding the heads of the Otago peninsula some two weeks prior, to see mansions on the hill, quays, streets, and plotted gardens—and he was surprised, now, to observe a well-dressed gentleman passing his lucifers to a Chinaman, and then leaning across him to retrieve his glass (I.1.42).
Of course, even while he's finding certain aspects of life in New Zealand primitive, he also seems a bit taken aback by the spots of luxury he's come across in his journey so far, such as the mansions on the hill in Otago and the well-dressed gentleman. It seems like perhaps he was imagining something even more "primitive."
Quote #3
'If you will forgive my pessimism,' he said, 'I believe that Hokitika is about to meet a darker time. This town is at a threshold. Digger law is still the creed of the hills, and here—why, we are but a backwater of Canterbury still, but soon we will be the jewel in her crown. Westland will split, and Hokitika will prosper; but as she rises, she will have to reconcile herself' (I.4.133).
George Shepard, too, sees Hokitika as a place where the "savage and the civil" meet. That's what he means, he goes on to clarify, when he talks about the need for Hokitika to reconcile herself. We guess he and Moody actually see eye to eye on that front.