NOTES FROM A BACK GULLY.
[by korari.] Some projected jßranch Railways. Now that the Midland Railway is in a fair way of getting the first sod turned, it will become the bounden duty of <|*ery enterprising colonist to do his level best to crack up the projected branch lines. Of these the Westport-Inangatiua is one. I know the locality pretty well and so do most of our readers. There will not be much " gardening" as the coutractor, Mr .Robinson, calls on this section. I have very lively recollections of what the Ohika Hill and Ha-.ks Crag used to be like, and railway making there will not be quite so easy an undertaking as it used to be on the Canterbury plains, where all we had to do for miles was to lay the sleepers and rails on the tussocks and ballast the line'and there was a railway at once.
However, there is a probability of some traffic being developed on that? line, if made. But on another proposed feeder.— the " Blenheim via Rai Valley to Nelson," I cannot even see the probability ; a good deal of outcry was raised whilst the last Parliament sat in respect to this line. Petitions were sent to Wellington, deputations waited on the Government, pressure was brought to bear in various directions," and the alternative route via the Tophouse was hold up to ridicule to show what a splendid country was likely to be opened up if this very desirable public work was undertaken. Sir Robert Stout had been through this magnificent country having driven from Nelson to Blenheim via Havelock. He, although a patriot of unquestionable character was uncharitable enough to state that he didn't see any thing to make a railway for. This statement was met by the assertion that the road did not run through the Rai valley itself in which good land and good timber both existed. I have travelled this road some half dozen times and I must say that I failed to see a single acre of good land between Wakapuaka and the Pelorus. Hungry birch hills with the rocks, and such rocks, grinning through the barren clay; the Wangamoa and the Rai saddles both impossible to surmount by railway grades, except by being pie.ced with expensive tunnels and not the slighest chance of any settlement on the route ; that is the sort of country which the observant traveller goes through for some 28 miles after leaving Happy Valley. A few settlers, who have homesteads elsewhere, have cleared a few hundred acres in the Wanganui Valley on which to raise cattle, but none of them live there: the cattle look as if they would like to go wild, but there isn't enough feed for them to get np that excitement even. A coach ran through to Nelson last summer in a fitful sort of a way but had to give it up with the first of the winter rains; the stage from Havelock to Nelson, 50 miles, being too much for one relay of horses, and there was no half way house. One is in course of erection at present, but the proprietor does not lay himself out to big things as yet. Some travellers who have stayed their to bait their horses have found that unless they brought their own feed with them that they might as well push on as stay for all the provender their horses would get; a3 for the menu some strange stories are told of the kind of dinner pro-
vided. On one occasion about a dozen friends of mine coached it through, and before starting from Nelson I advised sandwiches and a flask as travelling companions. Some took my advice, others scorned the idea. " Was there not an accommodation house on the road ?" asked they. They went, and after a week or two returned. My first enquiry was what they had for dinner at the Half way House. " Curried wild pork 1 they all answered in chorus. Oh, yes ! Wild pigs are the only things that flourish there ; long snouted, thick skinned, big tusked fellows. It was not many miles irom here that Captain Cook let the original pigs loose for the benefit of future generations. Little did the great navigater think when releasing the grunters from his vessel in Queen Charlottes' Sound that they would attain a patriarchal age and be served up curried and to a party of holiday makers a huudred and more years afterwards. Model Lodging Houses. Philantrophy in England takes different forms, sometimes the donor of spare thousands builds a hospital, or endows a church, or erects a steeple with a view of paving his way to a bettor world. Sometimes it takes the form of building model lodging houses: But none of the old country patriots have the least idea of how Colonists can adapt themselves to circumstances. We could put them up to a good many wrinkles I reckon ; either in building a house or running it afterwards. To give an instance how to build a house on the cheap, I once knew a case where a very knowing party (of the female persuasion) owned a bit of land which she considered was a desirable situation for a roadside pub. She persuaded a relative of hers to start building a house there, and used very convincing arguments to prove that it would be a good spec, for him.as he would be landlord. Bill was a bit of a sawyer and he got a mate and spent some months in sawing timber to erect the Hotel; the proprietress meanwhile undertaking to provide tucker: from time to time other men came to work, but the wild pig business was too much for all of them, and, being mostly old hands they had been used to roughing it, so they didn't mind so much. Finally a bricklayer was required and one was engaged to come and build the chimneys. He was a new chum, and had never roughed it. He was a conscientious sort of a chum though, for he finished the contract and more than that he, on presentation of his order for payment to the proprietress was told to go for his money to the party who had employed him. He didn't get it there or anywhere else, but he got something worth a good deal more to him- He got more colonial experience in ten days than most chums get in ten years. His discription of how they had to go into the bush and catch a hog before they could get any dinner, of how they all tried their hands at making damper, and the most successful of them only succeeding in producing a something in appearance, taste, and weight, like a sun dried brick, was enough to bring tears into ones' eyes; and his subsequent 30 miles tramp without his cheque, with an empty belly and a stock of newly acquired knowledge of New Zealand and its manners and customs were something to remember. Any how that house wasn't finished when I left the neighbourhood and I question if it is even now. Gold Mining.
One of the most genuine, (if not most of the most of all) industries in the Colony is gold mining; at any rate I have always thought so. And it is one which does not receive anything like the amount of countenance and support from the Government that it deserves. lam free to admit that a great doal of public money has been spent, most of it foolishly in endeavouring to foster mining, but there is a sort of fatality about Government money. A well managed company can make one pound go as far as three when spent by Government. The Nelson Creek water race is an example on a big scale. In small things hundreds could be named but one will suffice. Here in the back gully where I am now doing six months hard labour for my sins is a limited population. At one time they had a minister of the Crown as their representative in Parliament. They had voted for him to a man; there were less than 30 votes but that didn't matter; they had a member in the cabinet and they had helped to put him there and ho must do something for them. He courteously asked them what they wanted; some Wanted roads made, more wanted a convenient place at which to get miners rights registrations &c. The -minister in his endeavour to please everybody did what is generally the case in such matters offended everybody. He built a Court house. This structure is situated in a commanding situation, is highly ornamental, but utterly useless. It has never been used as a Court house. I think the member has adlressed his constituents to the number of seven once and nine another time on public matters, but no case has ever been heard there, and it stands in solitary grandeur a3 a monument of " how not to do it."
Now there is a good deal of false sentiment and bogus sympathy expressed for the poor digger by politicians of the Sir George Grey and Vincent Pyke sort with respect to the export duty of 2/ per ounce on gold. I consider it one of the fairest of taxes, and for very palpable reasons; a man who gets on gold is well oble to pay the duty ; it is a tax which costs nothing to collect; the proceeds are County reyenue and are therefore utilised in the district for the benefit of those who pay the duty. These and other reasons are sufficient to my mind for the retention of it. There is no question about the necessity of opening up new roads to encourage miniug enterprises, more par-
ticularly in the direction of prospecting. It is a matter of sheer impossibility to get through the dense undergrowth in the New Zealaud bush with a swag necessary for a man to prospect; as for pack horses doing the work as they can in the open bush in Australia is as all of us know futile to attempt. But the enormous unknown tracts of auriferous country known to exist on the West Coast could by means of sheep pack tracks be rendered accessible with the probability of extensive new fields being opened up. Another point in which I think reformation could be made is in some of the mining regulations as regards leases. On a new field there ought to be some more lenient charges than those now existing. For instance a miner whose right has already cost him £l, will, if he desires to take up a lease, have to pay a deposit of £l2 15/ and a rental of ±l6 10/ for the ordinary area of a lease- This amount is a trifle after the ground has been developed, a company formed, machinery erected, and dividends declared: but there are fortunate eventualities which are by no means oertainties to the individual who has to pay ±'29 10/ for the first year's fees to hold the ground. I think the regulations cannot be too stringent to preveut blocks of auriferous ground from being held for mere speculations; but there ought to be more liberal provisions for genuine prospecting on new fields. I should like some of your local readers who are interested in these matters to amplyfy this subject. A hard case. The diggings have always been a fine field for the shady side of human nature : One meets all sorts and conditions of men there, and amongst them are some very hard caseg. One of these horny handed sons of toil I interviewed the other day and he struck me as being a little out of the common. He is known as the Honorable John, and claims to be a direct lineal descendant of the great Earl of Warwick the king maker. The Honorable John under existing circumstances has anything but an aristocratic appearance about him. I was introduced to him after the day's work was over, and he had a few pennyweights of gold and was making a splash. His costume would have disgraced a scarecrow, and bankrupts my descriptive powers, although the garments were faw. An odd pair of boots with toes out; his p=ints;had been what are known to the soft goods trade as printed moles, but the printing had been superseded by clay and there were more holes than moles; a crownless hat and a coat —Oh ye gods ! what a coat. It had been a Paget in its time but who was the original owner even the Honorable John could'nt say. It had a history so tar as he knew which with very little persuasion he retailed to me. He had visited Nelson some months before and had started on a fifty mile tramp dead broke, without a coat to his back, but' with very lively compauy in the shape of a fit of the " Jim jaw 3." Before he reached Nelson he fell in with a party with a cheque who was knocking it down and the Honorable John joined in to assist in the operation, and thoroughly enjoyed himself wlrle it lasted. He arrived in town one evening and hearing music in a building walked in and found himself in the Salvation army barracks. He went right up to; the front seats and had not been long there when the eagle eye of one of the army caught sight of him, and evidently judged him to be a promising convert, and he charitably divested himself of his own coat and put it on the Honorable John's back. This was a good start for he had had a good spree and was now in possession of at least one decent garment. Next morning, feeling thirsty, he cast about for the wherewithal to raise a drink and his only realisable asset being the Salvation army coat, and there being no pawn shop in the place most men would have been at a loss how to go-about the transaction. But he was equal to the occasion. He found a Johnny all sorts, who dealt in everything, and after some negotiation he succeeded in swapping the Salvation coat for the rag he now wears and 4/ to boot. This individual like many more ne'er do wells in the Colony was a " remittance man," —is now I believe, has no wish to work, no ambition beyond getting drunk as often has he can, no self respect, and when out of money, out of credit, and an outcast from everywhere he buckles to in some worked out gully and from sheer compulsion fossicks out a pennyweight or two to body and soul together. He has some dim vestiges of better days m his manner and speech at times, but is at best a forlorn wreck. And he is only one of hundreds in the Colonies who have been "sent out to better themselves."
(Continuation of Ncivs, see 4th Page.)
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Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 294, 9 October 1886, Page 2
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2,507NOTES FROM A BACK GULLY. Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 294, 9 October 1886, Page 2
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