THROUGH NEW ZEALAND WITH PEN AND PENCIL.

Kumara Times, Issue 2879, 20 January 1886, Page 2

THROUGH NEW ZEALAND WITH PEN AND PENCIL.

KUMARA AND DILLMAN'S TOWN. Mr Charles H. Topham, who some weeks ago took a tour through New Zealand with pen and pencil, to describe for the readers' of the Sydney Town and Country Journal what he had seen, thus refers to Kumara and Dillraan's Town : When in the neighbourhood of Kumara and Dillmanstown, one frels that he is really in a mining district. Flumes, water and tail-races cross the rond at short intervals; great piles of round water-worn boulders, covered with a peculiar red fungus, He about in all directions; the ground is torn up; in fact, everything betokens the goldfield. I shall not weary my renders with a technical account of the miners and mining operations carried on here; it would be out of place in a letter of this description. Suffice it to say, I spent a wretched couple of hours tramping about in the rain from claim to claim; through mud, over heaps of slippery boulders, aloug shaky planks, and down rickety ladders, I was conducted by a zealous but kindly-infcen-tioned resident of Kumara. At any time, and under the most favourable circumstances, a landscape torn up and disfigured for miles by the searcbors for gold has a somewhat depressing effect upon the lovers of nature, but looked at through the haze of a steadily tailing rain, and with a dull leaden sky overhead, it is indeed melancholy. There are in all some sixty claims in this neighbourhood, some few of which are affording, I am told, as much as £2O per week. The process is exclusively hydraulic sluicing, nearly similar to 'hat carried on at Kiandra, of which I gave a description and sketches two or three years ago. I give a sketch of one of the claims here in which the hyd<ant is seen at work. I also send one showing the fluming at Dillmanstown.

The Kuraara sludge-channel, the property of the Government, is used by thirty-two of the above claims for carrying their tailings into tun Tereroakau river. For this they pay 10a per week per man, and £2 10. s per week per man for a supply of water from the Government dam. This channel is a mile in length from the head to the mouth, and a third of a mile from the mouth to the end of the race. The water rushes down it at the rate of thirteen miles an hour; upon oue or two occasions men have been washed down it. The bottom is constructed of a hard bluestone, wood, andirou; but so great is the friction that blocks of the above stone 14i n . thick are completely worn out in twelve months. Eight or ten meu are employed repairing the channel every night. J