LATER FROM KIMBERLEY.

Kumara Times, Issue 3103, 13 October 1886, Page 3

LATER FROM KIMBERLEY.

Another letter from a returned Kimberley digger is furnished by the Hamilton correspondent of the Auckland Herald of the 2nd inst., from which we make the following extracts;—“You will, pet haps, have heard before of my return from Western Australia. The supposed goldfield turned out a monstrous failure, or, I should say, swindle, as the West Australian Government’s reports are all greatly exaggerated to induce people to take capital into their wilderness of a country. The field, as I saw it, would not produce gold enough to keep one hundred men in food. Those who have taken waggons and drays seem to have undergone the most hardships. One party of two [ met on the track had taken a strong dray and five horse.--with 25cwt. of stores. They started from ilie Gulf with three horses in the dray, and two packing. The fiist day they had to abandon ocwt., as the load was too much for the three horses. With great difficulty they got 125 mi!e u on the track • then the dray broke down. Jbc five horses could then only pack

2cwt. each, so they sold what they could of the balance, and left the rest by the roadside, making a fresh start. For two days they got along well, but on the third morning after found three of the horses dead, poisoned with a certain grass which grows amongst the, other herbage in places, and ultimately reached the goldfield with two horses and 4cwt. only of goods, and then to find it a ‘sell.’ The above case is only one out of many. The track was lined all the way down with deserted and broken-down drays, waggons, spring carts, harness, and dead horses; and carved with a knife on many of the large bottle trees were to be seen tbe names of some poor fellows buried alongside who had succumbed in their efforts to reach or to escape from the field. One young man who had lost his horse, being over-fatigued, lay down with his head on his swag and his arms crossed, and was thus found dead. We constantly met men coming down looking perfect wrecks, the result of fever, scurvy, and dysentery. The eyes, if not protected, are so frequently attacked with flies and blight that it is very common to see men with one or both eyes swollen as large as a duck egg. Game was hard to get along the road, being very shy, as every man carried a gun. Bronze pigeons and quail were the most plentiful for the fifty miles from the Gulf; then we met with crows and hawks and sometimes a cockatoo.”