KIMBERLEY GOLDFIELDS.

Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 296, 23 October 1886, Page 2

KIMBERLEY GOLDFIELDS.

The following letter lias been handed to us for publication by Mr Thomas Cunningham, and no doubt the writer will be well known in this and the Reefton district : Kimberley, Augunt;24th 1886. Dear Tom, —I take the opportunity in addressing you with these few lines hoping they will find you in good health. I arrived in Cambridge Gulf about a month ago, and from there I went to Kings Sound and am now 7 about five miles from the Goldfields. I have had very bad luck here, I started with two horses but one of them died before I was 60 miles on the road; the hardships I have had to contend with are something more.than I can | explain. The climate here is exj tremely hot, it is fit for no one only niggers, and I am very near one now for 1 am as black as the ace of spades and on account of having the wool I am often taken for a darkey. I will now say a word about the gold. This place will be the rankest duffer that ever was in the Colonies, there is no gold here to pay nor never will. There have been men here 18 months and up to the present time not one of them has been able to clear his expenses. The reports in the papers are nothing but contaminated lies. There is not one word of truth in them. It is the poorest place that was ever known as a goldfield and I do not know what it will end in. There will be bloodshed before it is ended as men are all along the road half starving and one of the men who reported this place had to apply to the police for protection or else he would have been shot. I have not the least doubt but that you are eager to come as men lately arrived here tell me that good news is still: raging. Now don't you believe one! word of what you hear for there is no j gold getting of any account and mens' i names that I have seen in the papers to have got six and 700 ounces, tell me that they do not know who put it

in. I saw one man who was reported to have obtained 500 ounces and he told me that he only got 170 ounces and it cost him £7 10 s per ounce. A number of men have died here, on the road from Cambridge Gulf there are about 15 dead, on the Derby road there are about 40 dead. I expect to be upon the diggings early to-morrow, but what I tell you is a fact about the place as I met men today whom I know well and would not tell me a lie and would not leave if they could make tucker. I will give a trial anyway until I use the provisions I have got and then I will come away. O y I must now come to a conclusion. I do not know when you will get this as I am giving it to a man that is going away by the first boat. Trusting it will stop any further rush. I remain, <tc., Charles Williams.