MATAKANUL

Dunstan Times, Issue 502, 1 December 1871, Page 2

MATAKANUL

(Communicated. ) Drybread, which for so many years has been the depot for prov sions, and the business centre for the mining population located under the Dun-dan flange, will have to look to itself, as 11 Newtown ”, a nice little pillage that lias lately sprung into existence between Tinker’s and Smoker’s gullies will take all its trade. Newtown though only a few days old, already boasts of an hotel, a store, two butchers’ shops, and a baker’s, and rumor, with her ten thousand tongues says, the other adjuncts of a gold digging town are shortly to be added. The popula tion in this immediate neighborhood is steadily on the increase, and everyone is apparently doing well. Ground sluicing is the chief system adopted in the extraction of gold from the ground, and by the intelligence ami perseverance of some of our race owners I may say the system has reached ocrfection. 'I he improvements are chiefly noticeable at Drybread, where the canvas hose has given way to iron pipes. Pressure is the gr: n 1 desideratum! in ground sluicing and to produce the greatest possible amount. In one claim, eight hundred yards of irni piping is used, and in two others five himdred and three hundred yards respectively. At the first glance, a column of iron piping filled with water of the length of either referred to, is an unwieldy and umnanageable affair, but any difficulty on that tkrro. is overcome by the use of a length ofvulcanized india rubber tubing of the size as the pipes, eight inches, at the e* trerae end of which is attached the nozzle, and which from its pliability can be reedily and easily moved, and the water directed to any spot.