WAYSIDE NOTES.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2730, 16 November 1871, Page 2

WAYSIDE NOTES.

(By our Special Reporter.) CROMWELL. Colclough’s Reef has been working also for some time, and at a loss as I hear; but the company having now at 100 feet struck better and thicker stone, it is to be hoped they will be recouped for their outlay. I don’t pretend to give you details—the local papers do all this—only general outlines and salient characteristics. Some of your Dunedin readers may know perchance something about the Alta Company. I don’t know much myself, nor anyone else that I can find out; but I gather that the reef is patchy, as many reefs have been found to be—patches of payable stone that would pay to work, other patches paying nil—ground that would suit tributeis without conditions I am told, who always manage “to pick out the eyes of the claim” —the picking process is cribbed from the A mtralaslan—axiA. where at present tested, not rich enough to pay for working. I am going to say something of one more reef in this neighborhood, and I have done—Thompson’s Gully Jl§ef, Buy a share in this claifa} if you can, and leave me a legacy when you die, kind reader, for my advice. It is between Bendigo and Drybread, is as yet only in a crude mid undeveloped condition, but the most promising yearling I have seen lately. There is one singular feature connected with Logan’s Reef worth mentioning. “The Golden Link,” or piece of spare ground, is on the crown of the hill. What the gold in the eastern lease may be like in quality is not yet known, but in this particular piece of spare ground not only is the quartz said to be richer, but the gold is actually 17 grains one and a-half carats finer. There always has been a fatality of richness attached to spare ground since ground commenced to be worked, but this dual excellence is quite an anomalous case. There are two townships here, Wakefield and Logan Town, two public houses in each and one store; about SO people resident in the latter, and about 50 in Wakefield. There are about a dozen Chinese here, and 3 or 4 sluicing claims. I believe the Chinese day of rest, or Sunday, is on a Friday—at least I fancy I have heard or dreamed so. v Whether they refrain from labor or not on their special day I cannot say, but the people of Bendigo say they work on Sunday. I am not theologian enough to determine |f they keep their own Sabbath whether they will be condemned or not for not keeping ours as well. You can get this subject ventilated when the General Assembly is over—and people have leisuie to attend to spiritual concerns. The Bendigo correspondent of the Crow/el Argus informs the public that “ whales” arc getting plentiful in this locality—by whales he means “swagmen,” I cannot understand the nature or propriety of the simile at all. Is it that they are as 4 rule obese carrying a lot of blubber about, or that calves arc generaly found in their neighborhood ? it docs not seem now a Id mode to carry a swag—will swagmen have done much for the Province ? They aroused “old identity” from his slumbers some 9 and 10 years since; and ten or a dozen thousand swaggers seen now post haste to a new rush would clear off the overdraft better than selling’ a “wee patch” to Big Clarke. Is there any Baptist Missionary Society in Otago ? Have they—its members, if such a thing there be—any money or any spiritual men .ors belonging to their especial ism ?■ I reaiember a chapel in our patrician sister Province, as she loves to be called, being turned into a theatre ; but here they have turned “The Bendigo Boarding House” into a Baptist Chapel, and have not even taken down the signboard. I made almost a tremendous mistake—was going for dinner where divine, or what should be divine, service was being held. There is a peripatetic poaching preacher, who has embraced this outlying district in his circuit. He visits Bendigo Boarding House once a month, preaches one sermon on a Sunday afternoon, gets boarded and bedded, and paid five fiounds for so doing. He is evidently Cathoie in his opinions, as he sticks to no sect, but favors Spurgoomsra. He is doubtful

whether he can marry—other people I mean —or baptize. I guess he can’t have been properly made, or he would rather like such small events in human history. Now I like to see a man strike out a “new industry ” for himself. t'ould not the Government include this line in their “ Colonial In 'iistries,” and give him a bonus, and qualify him to fulfil the functions pertaining to his calling, as they have, and rightly too, requalified friend Smythies ? (En passant, I wonder how Judge Ward likes that victory of good Sir George Arney’s.) 1 don t know one sect from another, unless they chance to be “ Mormons at Home ; but L was informed the programme of worship was jßaptist like ; so fancy our friend must be poaching, if there are any game laws in this particular calling. Perchance, however, he only does as mining agents do—pave the way for the duly qualified I have had serious thoughts of adopting this role myself : five pounds a week for one sermon, and grnb free—l cannot get it out of my head. If any of your readers know of another such a district, I hope they will write me to the office, and I will give them a sermon free as a reward for their trouble. Five pounds an hour once a week ! Well, find the district! I’ll do it, or try at anyrate. Leader writing is a fool to it. There is a lot of passable land in the Clutha River Flat, but all more or less asserted to be auriferous. It wants—and in fact this is characteristic of all the Molyneux banks—some chief motive power to raise water from the river to work the banks. The inventor of such an apparatus would confer great benefit on the Province. It is strange that Mr Thomson’s invention has not yet been utilised. There is at Clyde a Frenchman who has a similar idea in his head— and who is attempting to carry it out but he has to ask his neighbors what his next step shall be. He can’t see clearly. The Government have thought it worth their while to survey some additional town sections at Bendigo Gully, you will remember they will all be sold and occupied beiore jnany years elapse, QUEENSTOWN, The London Times aad the New Zealand Illustrated Herald have both lately been soiling paper and displaying their ignorance when attempting to describe and illustrate respectively the features of that queen of all inland townships in Otago, Queenstown. The “Thunderer,” when noticing Chevalier’s sketches of Wakatip scenery, had delegated the task to some fellow who had wintered at Spitzbergen, and derived his ideas of our lacustrine climate from his experience there—or perchance has since been frozen up and lost one of his toes in Norway otherwise he would never certainly have written such magnificent bosh on the subject as he has. The sketch in the Herald reminds me of the celebrated block first cut to represent Washington for an illustrated American paper, then altered to suit some other popular character’s facial angle—doing duty for Henry Clay, Dan Webster, Kossuth, Gariba'di, Barnum—and I believe I met my old acquaintance the other day in a likeness of a fellow that had murdered his keeper, and “got clear” from Sing Sing. When I notice any of these remarkable productions, similar to that purporting to represent Queenstown, and at which the inhabitants “laugh consumedly,” I am always led to wonder for what the scene plate was originally cut, the number of transformations it has undergone—and when it will “ positively make its last appearance.” Queenstown, you’ll remember, is on the shore of Lake Wakatip, on the ancient bed of the Shotover, when the outlet of the Lake was at Kingston, and the waters thereby boldly ran seaward and southward into the sea, instead of stealing away in such a surreptitious manner as some of the waters of jibe Lake now do. The town—it boasts three well-lined streets, and Tuapeka has only two—is on the old river bed, where a lead of gold will probably some clay be found, running from Arthur’s Point to the Peninsula. It has the merit of being situated on level ground, and being laid out in a regular and rectangular manner. It has none, nor ever will have any, of the triangular eccentricities of Dunedin, and has no streets running up Break-Neck Hills nor Constitutional acclivities. It is about 1030 feet above the sea level, and has, after Nelson, the best climate in the Colony. It is sufficiently far away from the metropolis to look well and carefqlly after its own concerns ; and its inhabitants, conscious of their resources as yet undeveloped, care more for the prosperity of their own district than all the Colony beside. This sentence does not fully explain my meaning ; I’ll try another. They are almost self sufficient. They can exhume the hard cash to command the world’s merchandise for aught they cannot produce. I heir auriferous deposits are as yet scratched over only ; and the quartz districts ol the .Shotover will in fifty years time probably produce five-fold the gold the vicinity as yet has ever yielded.