WOODSTOCK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 824, 21 December 1882, Page 2

WOODSTOCK.

[prom our own correspondent. ] Rimu, Dec. 18.

/The long continued dry weather we have experienced stopped nealv all wdfrk for several weeks, but the rain we got on the Ist and 2nd of this month supplied sufficient water to wash out nearly all the paddocks, and work went on briskly again for a week or two, when the dry weather once more stopped operations for a few days. However, on the 16th it started raining and still steadily continues, with every prospect of a week’s rain. All the paddocks which were ready have washed up, and plenty of water is running to waste. There is a heavy flood in the Hokitika river. The water has. risen fully five feet (perpendicular), and spreads from bank to hank.

During the first of the dry weather the miners lit fires in alt direction to clear the scrub from around their camps, * but as the bush was very dry and the; wind occasionally rather high, the fires in many cases get quite beyond control, and several parties were burned out, while* many others had very narrow escapes. > “Yours truly” was among the “burnt; outs,” and that accounts for his long! silence, for which he must apologise. ; The rush for water made things quite! lively for a short time. A certaip party had been promised the water, but it; did not arrive, whereupon one of the! party turned someone else’s water intp their flume, and sat on the guage-box with a tomahawk in his hand until the paddock was washed, defying the Water-race proprietor to turn the water off, saying “ He had been promised the water, and ,he meant to have it.” ■

Some of the paddocks sluiced last time; gave splendid returns, the result being:— 1 Sander’s and party, who got 45 ounces from 80 loads of dirt; another party got 40 ounces from the same amount of dirt.: Lincoln and party got Sidwts. to the load, while White and party and Camping-and party got only 2dwts. to the load. | Since the warm weather set in the mos--quitos have been making things pretty lively at night, and without a good mosquito curtain sleep is out of the question. One poor lady at the Kokatai told me that when her husband first selected land ,in the bush, two years ago, the mosquitoes used to torment them to such an except, not only at night but also during the day, that she has many a time sat down and had a good cry, feeling utterly wretched—her arms and face being swelled to twice their natural size from the stings of these little tormentors. So troublesome •were these small pests that her husband was on the point of giving up the land and leaving the district, but as the land got cleared of the bush the nuisance gradually abated. All work on the diggings -will bp suspended from Christmas to the New Year, that week being strictly observed as a holiday. '