Depression in the South Island

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 86, 31 December 1885, Page 3

Depression in the South Island

In the Middle Island the depression evidently is beginning to disappear. At the quarterly meet me of the Christchurch Chamber of Commerce, ihe Chairman, in hit addroM, gpoke in a hopeful manner of the future. He said that the farmers report the crops generally as promising belter than average yield, and with a plunlilul supply of grass for tneir stock, they are in better spirits than for some tiiup pa»t. He had just returned from the West Coaat, he said, and as far as he could see, although the halo/en days of gold-digging may be over, the storekeeper* and others, as a natural consequence, find trade less brisk than when miners were squandering there easily - earned money, yet gold mining was entering on a new phase which was likely to do bath the miners good and the colony more good than it has done in. the eld days. A. considerable population was earning fair — in fact, good wages, and many are now quietly saving up their surplus earnings, intending to settle down to some more certain occupation when they have gathered sufficient capital. While •n the coast he heard of good reefs.having been recently found and proved at Mokibinui, Weatport, Lyell, and Beef ton, and there seems an indication of a revival in prospecting and mining throughout the coast. It is, however, on the coal deposits that the future wealth of Westland depends, and with the harbor works now being carried on at Westpert and Greymouth there should, in a few years, be an immense trad* done there in coal. All this if very satisfactory to learn, and we may in another year expect to speak of the depression as a thing of the past.