KAURI GUM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 662, 22 April 1914, Page 2

KAURI GUM.

Improved methods of operations are destined to revive the gum-digging industry. For some time past it has been freely predicted that the industry was near its end as the kauri gum deposits were exhauted. The gum-digger of yesterday was merely a "fossicker," and yet with gumspear and spade he made good money in securing the'gam near the surface. The operations to day are carried out more methodically, and in quita a different way. Now deep drains are cut in many swamps where ancient kauri forests flourished, and the diggers delve or dredge for the amber traa&ure, which is often found in larg9 quantites ten and fifteen feet, and even deeper down under the peat and mud. In one of the great swamps of Northern Wairoa there are about five hundred men working more like navvies than gum-diggers, and their weekly earnings aggregate !25 tons of a value of £I2OO. They pay a handsome royalty to the landowners, and with it all make a fairly good living. Most of these men are. Croatians and Daimatians, who have bad an agricultural training, and are anxious to settle down on farmsThuse who have secured holdings are successfully improving their proper, ties, and clearly demonstrate that they are the right stamp of men for Now Zealand.