Untitled

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1147, 2 April 1872, Page 2

During the present quartz mania, it is just possible that the alluvial resources of the Inangainia District may be overlooked unless special attention is directed to them, and we take the opportunity of doing so, because we feel assured that the thousands of men who cannot now find employment on the reefs may find it in alluvial workings mr the creeks. From personal experience, we say that Bourke's^ Soldier's, Redman's, Flower's, Painkiller, Buatman's, and Murray Creeks, with numerous others, were opened. and worked in 1866, and some of the ground was exceedingly rich, especially at Redman's Creek.. The beds of the existing creeks are all partially prospected, but scarcely anything has been done on the terraces. A water-race was brought to.. some.high gijpund on a. tributary of the left fork of the Inangahua some years ago, but there has been very little sluicing done on a systematic or extensive scale. There are ! good opportunities for entering on this description of mining, because the water is nearly all available, yet very little of.it is being taken possession of. A considerable amount of prospecting was done at the time-Murray Creek was opened, and gold was found- in numerous places scattered over a large extent of country, which would pay small wages even then. Provisions and tools were at the time very expensive, and the cost of living was very high. Flour was one shilling per pound at the township of Kynnersley, which formerly stood on Fern Flat, and other articles were dear in proportion. Before Messrs Arthur Devery and David M'Gaughey cut the first track from the Little Grey over the Saddle to the Inangahua, the miners on the Inangahua were compelled to carry their provisions from the Slab Hut and St. Patrick's Hill, in the Litjtle Grey District, and, with all these disadvantages to contend with, the ground then opened paid well, so that it is reasonable to suppose that when the miners again turn their attention to prospecting systematically for alluvial workings, their efforts will be successful. The coming winter, with its severe weather, is the great bugbear which used to strike terror into the hearts of new arrivals on the Inangahua. It was the same story at the firstoperiing of the Otago Gold Fields, and at the Dunstan and Lake Wakatij> diggings ruinous prices were paid for freight so that heavy stocks could be laid jn.tov the approaching winter. None of these prognostications

of snowing up, raging floods, and consequent starvation were fulfilled, and no great alarm need be felt f for the safety of those who choose to wintered i the Inangahua. The weather there is not, on the .average, any worse than it is in the Grey or Buller Valleys ; if anything; the Inangahua has the advantage <iv -being drier the year round. It is not here the danger lies; it is in over-crowding the place beyond the possibility- of— absorption with a strange and comparatively- helpless population, as has recently taken place.