Untitled

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 722, 3 September 1870, Page 2

To-pay we publish the details of the General Government railway scheme, wliiali has been assented to by the House of Representatives, and strangely enough, in our telegraphic column, we give one of the strongest arguments in favor of doing everything in our power to assist in any scheme that will open up the country and enable the people to develop its magnificent resources. Another gold discovery has been made in the Nelson Province, iv a district now a terra incognito, but which would soon be settled if the Nelson and Cobden railway scheme were carried out. On this subject we are glad to find that the Nelson Examiner has considered it- in its true light, and we cannot do better than give a rather lengthy extract from the columns of our contemporary: — "It would be unsafe to predict any great development of the riches of the Buller and Grey districts while the country remains inac-f cessible. and the wear and tear of constitution to miners working there, through want of roads, continues what it is at present. The difficulties of the country are at present too great to afford it a chance of progressing. But if anything can be regarded as certain which is not proved, it is - that a railway through the Buller and Grey valleys would open out a gold field equal, if not superior in riches and extent, to any gold field the world has ever seen, and capitalists who have had the offer of the fee simple of the' whole country on the simple condition of making a railway through it — will loose a chance of enriching themselves which they in their wildest dreams will never obtain again. On this side of the water-shed, there is the whole auriferous country of. the Upper Motueka, and the tributary valleys of Wangapeka, Baton, Sheiry, Tadmor, and others. On the western side, there are the two wain valleys of the Buller and Grey, each a hundred miles in length, with scores of tributary valleys, nearly everyone of whichisgold producing, and capable of maintaining a large number of diggers could they only live there at reasonable rates, and be supplied with the necessaries of life without becoming beasts of burden, having to convey oh their backs over tho .roughest possible country every article they consume for distances varying from ten to thirty miles. In addition to this extensive alluvial country, there is reason to believe the Buller and Grey Valleys abound with reefs of the richest description. On the north side of the Buller rich stone has been found at the Lyell, and reefs have been traced southward as far as the Grey, whilo the reefs at Wangapeka are probably but a northerly continuation of the ( same formation. The reefs at Wangapeka alone, within the next ten years, will, we fully believe, yield a profit greater than the whole cost of constructing the proposed railway. This is not an unconsidered opinion, made without data. Numerous tests applied to stone taken from 1 Wangapeka all give the same satisfactory result. '. Stone in which gold is scarcely visible has yielded, on five successive trials, conducted* by different persons— on the last occasion by Dr Hector, at the Government Labora-

tory—upwards of two ounces of gold j to the ton. Theso reefs are all of great thickness — from throe to live foet thick — while with some, the stone fora time will have simply to be quarried, and may 1 o tumbled into a shoot, or conveyed by a wire tramway, and delivered in a few minutes at a spot where unlimited waterpower at all seasons will set in motion the machinery for crushing. To obtain the Wangapeka Valley alone, with its possible sixty thousand acres, would be J sm ivwesfanemt to tempt a Rothschild, did ' he but understand its value," as the price for constructing the Nelson and Cobden Railway. Tho truth is, tlie wealth of the country is too great for persons at a distance to believe. The old lady was incrc - dulous when informed that rain never fell in the valley of the Nile ; but when her son told her he had fished up from the bottom of the Red Sea a wheel of one of Fharoah's chariots, she at once accepted his story. It will not be a subject of regret, if the railway from Nelson to Cobden is constructed with borrowed capital bearing five or six per cent, interest, and the profits derivable froni the mineral wealth of the district are retained in the colony instead of going to enrich foreign capitalists."