GOLD RUSHING.

Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 294, 9 October 1886, Page 4

GOLD RUSHING.

[Contributed to Canterbury Times.] When we read the doleful accounts that come from some of those who were bitten by the maggot and rushed off, so as not to be a minute late at Kimberley, it seems but a repetition of the old, old story. Turn back to the old files of 1849, and read there the stories of disappointment and failure from that undispufcably rich country, California. Search the records of 1851-2, and see what many had to say about the hollowness of the " jeweller,s shops " of Ballarat, the shallow golden holes of Bendigo, the riches of Forest Creek and the Ovens. Ask old miners who know, to tell about the failures of the Omeo, the Rockhampton, the new South Wales and Queensland rushes, that have since coined money and made home for thousands. Who know better than the Victorians, who now decry Kimberley, how they came in thousands to Gabriel's, pronounced it a failure ? How many returned from Hokitika despondent and from the Thames ruined ? And yet, spite of all these recorded declarations of the, falsity of the rushes, the gold was there and those who stayed and faced the music, got it, some more, some less, but in some way making a new community (u" of the ill-reputed rush, with all the surrounding of business and life that fellow. So it will be with Kimberley. Certainty there are disadvantages of distance of climate, water, insects, wild men. On the other hand, some of those apparent objections gre advantages. Ask an old miner which he prefers, a new gold country at a distance that the crowd cannot easily reach, or a rush next door, as it were, to long-worked and half used-up mines, with a large population ready to overwhelm any new ground opened up. Distance! What is the distance or the hardships compared to what the hardy crowd of young Britishers went through, who left the Old Home in the "fifties," many of them in all sorts of rotten old tubs that would not be allowed to carry a passenger in those days, and with the almost certainty of a hundred and more days' passage before them ? It took time to reduce the voyage to less, although now and then a wonder of the age, like the famous Marco Polo, with her devil-may-care skipper, James Nicol Forbes, would find her way into Port Phillip Bay in seventy days, or even less. What would the youngsters of the present day think of the foul food that the former generation had to put up with—the salt beef like mahogany, the rancid fat pork, the stone-hard and brown biscuits, the often foul-smelling water ? Not whisked in a two or three thousand ton steamer in a couple of weeks, barely out of sight of land, with all the modern appliances for comfort on the sea, and the certainty that if disappointed, another few weeks would return them to their homes. With postal advantage, perhaps the wirea, not having to wait weary months for a "letter from home," or the where-withal, if out of luck, to return to the old land—where is the comparison between the old Cslifornian and Australian rushes and that to Kimberley ? They are not to be mentioned together. That there is going to be a large goldfield in the Kimberley country that will employ a population, no one who has carefully followed the official description of the surveyors and geologists, and many miners' letters, can doubt. There is gold, more or less, over a very large extent of altogether new country; and, however much, many may be disappointed in their anticipations, whether from want of judgment or energy, or funds, or luck, that country it really seems will in time be looked upon as the land of hope by the thousands of young people who are growing up around us, and who will need openings, not only as gold miners, but as professional men, mechanics, and traders, for it is plain that New Zealand will not suffice for them. We ought all to be thankful that such an outlet has been discovered, for not only will it be good for the lucky ones who may go, but there will be established an extensive market for New Zealand produce, in a climate which cannot by any possibility grow such upon the spot. We may for the day lose population, only to be well repaid later. As in every phase of life, whether in the Old Country or the new, some will fail —that is fate with the best efforts, some will miss the bull's eye. So it has always been; so it always will be. Again, many looked at all round, from a matter of fail from other well-known causes. But, at a point of view, there seems to be a good prospect that a field of employment in every line is going to be opened out that will be a beuefit to the Colonies as a whole.