THE Mount Ida Chronicle SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1874.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 268, 25 April 1874, Page 2

THE Mount Ida Chronicle SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1874.

The brisk competition at the Land • "ffice, on Monday, for the dozen surveyed sections on the Kock and Pillar block; at"Hyde, shows how necessary it is.thiit laiid should be more freely opened for bona fide, applications on ,-fche deferred payment system: Eor •these paltry twelve sections'we have applicants-from Duriediu and the Shag Valley. There is "hardly one section but what will have to be ballotted for. Owing to the disproportion between the increase of productiveness of the Goldfields and that of their population, the_usual phenomena exhibited is that, year by year, living becomes dearer, because more mouths have to be fed proportionally as the means to feed them diminishes. The natural safeguard to this is the settlement of the superfluous mining population on the non-auvil'wouK lands. Hitherto this has been' reta-ded, owing to the narrowness and want of forethought of our laud laws, and also by. the irrational *'arid equally illiberal views of those actively engaged in gold-mining, who, prosperous themselves, are too often; frightened that any alienation of the land in small blocks may, by some possibility, injure their future 'prospects. The remedy for this, we have already pointed- out, is resumption of land, however, alienated, for mining purposes. 'L'hcy do not recogthat this exclusive claim they set up is doubling upon 'themselves the cost of living—that, if the laud remains unoccupied, and practically non-pro-ductive of revenue, the neeessitL-.-, of an indebted country deprived of its natural buoyancy will force the'sale, as it has done already, to the capitalist at his own price. What has given Tuapcka its prosperity at the present time is this happy comingling of the mining and agricultural interests. We have often expressed before our opinio:;, which we'still hold, that there is .Agricultural land in abundance, in the district, only requiring surveying into suitable sections for application, together with the many years' mineral we-ilth still untouched, to render Mount Ida second to no other Goldfield district in the P/ovince.

The G<ryer»irm'nt of Otago will very seriously neglect the interest of the Northern district ifliboKil concessions of land arc not speedily offered for sottlcmeTjt> The..General (-Government aro spending Colonial funds to develope the mining interest. Their action will be, to a very serious decree, nullified' if the Province confines the settlement' on land to 'more favored districts where there is no other industry. fst< with uw, of itself creating and sus-

der out- notice lately: that a tine sample of wheat was last year j-i-own aui! ripened at Garibaldi-, on- the top of i\'orth hid<*e, nearly 2,000 feet above the sea,, and from 800 to 1,000 above the centre, of the Maniototo Plain. " •