MONTHLY COMMERCIAL RECORD.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume I, Issue 22, 28 November 1861, Page 2

MONTHLY COMMERCIAL RECORD.

(From the New Zealander , Nov. 6.) The transactions of the past month have been of the same guarded nature as those that have marked the business relations of the last six or eight months. Commercially, as veil as physically, ivc arc at a pause ; waiting anxiously, but trustingly, the event of peace or war. The prevalent impression is that there will bo no further employment for the sword, but that Europeans and Natives will be placed upon the same amicable footing so long and beneficially subsisting between them, and that peace, if peace should happily prove to bo, will bo established upon such a basis, and with such an assured guarantee for its maintenance as cannot fail to give an all powerful and immediate impetus to successful colonisation, and of binding over all parties, by that, legitmate means, to keep the peace towards each other. The quiescent attitude of the troops in camp and city, the dis-

position of Her Majesty’s Ships of War, all point to this as the likely termination of the present untoward embarrassment ; and with an an adequate force retained suillciently long to exercise a moral influence upon the Native mind, we feel convinced there will be no necessity for any appeal to arms ; whilst with confidence restored and a return to that measure of immigration in full flow in the inauspicious month of February, 1860, not only the Province of Auckland, but the entire colony of New Zealand will soon bo placed beyond all apprehension of future Maori outbreak. These are the hopes, indeed we may say the convictions, daily gaiuing ground in the minds of the best informed among us. Anxiety, of course, there largely prevails to ascertain the means proposed to restore the country to quiet. These, however, must be waited for with patience, because they must be applied with prudence : and the past career of our present enlightened ruler affords the most satisfactory assurance that he will neither precipitate a quarrel nor injure the colony by patching up a hollow and disastrous peace. There is another indication of a peaceful desire among the Natives themselves ; and this is in the extension of their this season’s cultivations which have been conducted on a larger scale than for some years past. The Europeans, too, have planted a greater breadth, and altogether Agriculture has been much more active.

A wet and weary winter has been followed by a gentle, genial, dropping spring. For many years a finer season has not been seen. The country is in the most beautiful condition, the pasturage luxuriant, and the crops, in general affording the most hopeful promise. Otago which, in a commercial point of view, hoped to compensate for the abstraction of our population by the absorption of some of our merchandise and produce, has not turned out to bo an available market. The enormous rush of giant clippers, with thousands of passengers, and goods of every kind, particularly from Melbourne, has glutted the markets and overpowered the diggings. The results, as far as concern the auriferous wealth of the Otago diggings, are indisputable ; equally so are the facts that these fields are of limited known extent and that there arc more, many more, diggers in quest of available claims, than there are claims wherewith to satisfy them. As in all such cases, numbers have flocked to Otago, with no means beyond those that sufficed to carry (hem to the port of landing ; misery and privation are consequently rife, and hundreds arc flocking back quite irrationally to the spot from whence they came as they did to the distant glitter of (lie gold which so completely besotted them. The force of the Auckland ebb has expended itself, and looking at its extent, we ought to be perfectly content at its moderate dimensions. The returning Hood will, no doubt, materially compensate it. Of our own Coromandel Gold Fields, we have little to report. A considerable tract of laud has been offered for sale by the Natives, and Government is engaged in ascertaining its boundaries, and following up the initiatory measures for its acquisition. Confidence in the auriforious riches of the Coromandel ranges becomes more and more conclusive in the minds of those who are prospecting there. Gold of finer quality and in larger quantity is found the nearer the quartz ranges are approached. If, therefore, the Government only succeed in opening up this district to Mining enterprise the most hopeful assurances prevail that it will be found to be one of (ho richest diggings either in New Zealand or elsewhere.