Dunstan " High-Falutin."

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 202, 23 September 1873, Page 5

Dunstan " High-Falutin."

“ Snyder,'” a contributor to the Auckland Herald, Isas the following : —“ I just want a few minutes conversation with some of those gentlemen connected with the newspaper Press who are given to—well, let me bo polite and say—exaggeration. A few days back I read ail article in an Otago paper, published, I think, at the Dunstan, which stated that the Otago Goldfields were the richest in the world ; that nothing before was ever like to them, and nothing that will come after will be a patch on them. My noble writer, will you permit me to say in the most delicate manner it is possible to frame the message in, that you are a great ignoramus, and know nothing of what you are talking about. Now lam on my mettle, permit me to say that the whole of the goldfields of Victoria once, and once only though, produced more gold in a single ten months than New Zealand has since the day the discovery was made that its soil was auriferous. 1 know something about goldfields, from the days of California to the Green Harp swindle, and so, I suppose, I have a right to speak nut. Did the Dunstan ever yield seventeen thousand ounces of gold in one day, as Canadian Gully did ? Did the Dunstan ever yield twenty-two thousand ounces of gold a week as the Eureka did ?—gold, mind you, of quality worth over £4 an ounce. Did the Dunstan ever yield for three consecutive years forty-six thousand ounces of gold a week ? Did the Dunstan ever yield one-half of what the White Horse yielded, or a quarter of what the Frenchman’s yielded, or an eighth of what was got at Fryer’s Creek, or a sixteenth at Avoca, or a thirty-second at Ararat ? Did the Dunstan month after month, year after year, yield forty-six thousand ounces a week like Ballarat ] Why, of course it didn’t. Then, what’s the Use of talking ? So 1 have just to request that the newspaper men of the Dunstan who talk about New Zealand possessing the richest goldfields ift the World %iil be good enough to shut up, and oblige fchfei!* truly,—Snyder.”