LATEST FROM THE PALMER.

Evening Star, Issue 3733, 9 February 1875, Page 3

LATEST FROM THE PALMER.

[From, the Wakatip Mail.) Although the recent mania amongst many of our residents for rushing away to this reported new Eldorado is fast fading, som • good purpose may still be served in allaying any remaining desire or restlessness which may exist, by making public from time to time, various accounts—especially when the narratives are from reliable private resources, such as that below, which is from the pen of an old settler, who left here for the Palmer goldfields over four months ago, and has recently returned • 12th January, 1875, Being an old resident in the Wakatip district for many years, I wish to inform my old friends that are inclined to go the Palmer diggings not to be in too great a hurry, for I left the Wakatip, being induced to go there by flattering news appearing in different papers, which stated, among many other good things, that diggers were getting from one to four ounces per day per man. Now, I believe that some men who were on the field when Sandy Creek broke out did get that for a few days. What is called washdirt is scattered on the reef amongst a little clay, and all one can use is a tin dish. Some of them haVe got a cradle; but, as far as I saw, it took men all their time to get from one to four pennyweights per day, and it took all that to keep them in “ tucker,” besides having to stand a climate fit for no white man -men dying in all directions from fever, ague, and dysentery, and many other diseases which I never heard of before. There are also all sorts of venomous animals, such as flies, ants, mosquitos, centipedes, tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, and all sorts of pests that you can mention. You never can get a minute’s peace to yourself, night or day ; and the sun is that hot that during a portion of the day you are neither able to walk or work. The road you have to travel on going up to the diggings from Cooktown is sometimes knee-deep, and so hot that you can scarcely bear it, and sometimes you have to travel a long way without water. But of all the pest, the blacks are the worst, for you are never sure when they will come upon you—night or day. People always have their firearms in order as they travel up the country. The sun is so hot that you are not fit to carry your swag, and consequently all that can afford it get horses. At the time I went the price of horses was very high, and by the time we arrived at Cooktown, and had bought horses and an outfit, and paid our passage from New Zealand, it cost us about L'is each. Seeing so many graves on onr road up on all sides pf the track, and so many dying on the diggings from fever —while we could not get as much gold as would find us in “tucker,” and, besides,, the wet season coming on—we resolved, before too late, to return to New Zealand, where we could get a sound night’s rest. At the Palmer I have risen in the morning blistered from bead to foot wir.h poisonous bites from insects, and all I have to say is, that if you want to see hardship and misery go to the Palmer, and as you go up you will see painted on the trees—“ This is the road to death and hj 11! Eeturn.” Frank Forster,