OUR ARROW LETTER.

Evening Star, Issue 3690, 20 July 1875, Page 3

OUR ARROW LETTER.

Arrow, July 17. The accounts from the Shotcver reef received to-day continue favorable. stone being raised by the tributers from a six feet lode is placed by a careful ’estimate of their own as likely to average 2oz per ton —not 50oz or 60oz, as stated by the Lakes* correspondent of the ‘Dunstan Times,’ and quoted by you. Two •unces, however, with such a body of stone and with the lode to be worked by stopes and trucked straight to the battery, is a magnificent return, and will give about l,ooooz from the next crushing; even 7dwts was, with these facilities, estimated to pay well Southberg and party are employing more men, and consider their prospects to be gradually improving. They are the only party who have stuck firmly to the Skippers reef, .through all kinds of fortune, sometimes nearly ruined, and again recovering. Some years ago they had thirty men working for them, latterly their own party of three alone has been engaged, and as they have their own battery of sixteen stamp herds, they were able to tide over years of depression. In 1873 these three men earned 300oz.; in 1874 only 200oz, This year they are doing better, and during all this time they have been paying Ll2O per annum rent for mining leases. Holders of mining leases are being looked after sharply by the Government for payment of rent. Residents on the Shotover and in Queenstown are becoming alive to the necessity of a dray road for the Shotover. The movement will be influentially taken up and ere long the Executive will be appealed to to direct a survey. The district is one possessing probably greater undeveloped fesources than any other field in the Province, and its progress has been crippled for want of means of communication. Only the other day the conveyance of three stamper boxes from Queenstown to the Nugget Reef, about twenty miles, coat LI 30, and any machinery which has yet been taken up has been at a ruinous cost. In justice to the Government it must be stated that the Shotover people have always been divided among themselves and only interested in petty works in their several localities, instead of uniting in pressing forward a good main line of road to command the whole river, or a dray road might have been obtained long ago. The municipal elections nre approaching. Mr Warren is spoken of as the prolabie Mayor of Queenstown, and Mr W, Jenkins, storekeeper, os that of the Arrow. The Arrow United Company are not likely

resume pumping until the work of closely damming off the large surface drainage from Bush Creek and conveying it by a flood-race shall have been effected. This cannot bo done until the frost is over, when works will be resumed, it is hoped with greater success. It has been snowing all day on the Remarkable®, and the mountains now look very grand in the clear moonlight, with snow down to their base.