WELLINGTON WAKING UP.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1216, 21 June 1872, Page 3

WELLINGTON WAKING UP.

[independent, jttnb 15.] The very gratifying intelligence which we publish to-day of the first successful crashing at the Inangahua quartz reefs bean considerably upon the question of the Wairarapa railway. It may appear at first sight to affect the question very remotely, bat a little consideration will enable us to see that the more the mineral districts of the West Coast are opened the greater necessity is there for opening np communication from the seaboard to the rich agricultural and pastoral interior of Wellington. From the extreme care that has been taken to make the experimental crushing at Reefton a thoroughly reliable and general one, we are fairly entitled to form the opinion, with the Warden, " that the stability of the district is assured," and that a very large population will shortly be located in that part of the country. Indeed, it is highly probable that it will become a more important mining district than the Thames, for the reason that the quartz is in exten* sive, well defined reefs, covering a ]arge exteut of country, and that the gold is found generally scattered through the stone, and. not in patches or , J< specimens," as at the Thames. We should not be surprised to find twenty or thirty thousand miners in the district, and it becomes an interesting enquiry who is to feed them 1 At present the district depends upon importations from Melbourne sent to Westport and Grey mouth for general goods. Cattle and sheep come in small numbers from the Amuri and Wanganui, but mostly from Christch arch, whilst Nelson can barely keep np the supply of butter, eggs, cheese, (Sec. Surely Wellington— a port distant only about twenty to twenty-four hours by steam — should secure some of the large trade that will spring up in commodities suitable to its production. We are told every day when we ask qnestions of this sort — " We can grow you plenty of fruit, produce any quantity of excellent buttery cheese, and bacon — but the cost of bringing it to port — and the absolute impossibility of doing so in some cases prevents our competing with other places." And no doubt, so long as the producing districts are cut off from rapid and cheap communication with the port, thuir progress and prosperity will be retarded, and settlement and cultivation be unprofitable. It is by no .means an improbable conjecture that the miners now having discovered the bearings of the reefs near the dividing range on the West Coast will push their researches northward in the direction of Marlborough, where auriferous reefs have to a small extent been discovered, and where more important discoveries may at any time be made, resulting in large mining settlements* in Cook's Strait. Wellington is specially favorably situated for supplying that part of the country, and we have no doubt that the construction of the proposed railway to the Wairarapa would lead to a prosperous development of the agricultural resources of the province more extensive than the most Banguine could anticipate. We are boiling down our cattle and sheep for want of a market; our fruit rots on the ground ; it will not pay to convert our milk and cream into butter and cheese ; whilst if we had cheap transit to ithe port we could have access to large and constant markets. These are words which the settlers of Wellington may use, and we hope the Government is equally alive to the necessity of pushing on the Masterton railway with all convenient speed.