LAKE WAKATIP.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 332, 16 July 1875, Page 3

LAKE WAKATIP.

(From our own correspondent.)

This district is btisy with such work as win- ' ler will allow the followers of its varied interests to execute. Shortness of day, and frozen ~ surface, cause much loss of time ; but much ' preparatory work is being done in many branches of industry—although mining and a sericulture are supposed to be hindered most. " Our miners are by no means idle, nor are the farmers inactive. Work of sorts is executed, to suit the seasons : The miner takes tunnelling where it is to be liud, o* gets his otber preparations for works nut in order ; ard, altogether, o-ir time in winter, in this high-lying district, is pretty well occupied. Since my last a miner, named Patrick C.-iro-lin, got killed while sinking a shaft on the Shotover. The shaft was down about 15 feet' when it caved in, and smothered the poor fellow ere he could be es'rie ited.

The fourth annual meeting-,of the Arrow District Miners' Association met at Arrow on Saturday evening last, but I feel sure you will not need any further 1 eporfc of their doings' from lue than that, I may say, some ominous converse took place between some private' members anent the vexed question of riparianrights; and, if the whole of the miners in New Zealand, are of the opinions—which were expressed without contradiction —the decision in the Maerewhenua case is likely to lead tosome bad consequences ; not the least of which will be a wide-spread want of confidence in the integrity of even our highest tribunals, ii is to be hoped that the error iB not so great as some of the sufferers suppose; and that, although the Appeal Cours, or those who constitute it, might have sympathies with tlie ; landed proprietors of New Zealand, that they did not allow such sympathy to bias their judgment in this case, bat common sense, is so much at variance with the conclusions arrived at in the Maerewhenua case,, that common people may well be excused a reasonable amount of curiosity as to the cause of the evident miscarriage of justice indicated by the decision. It is evidently high time that the Government of "New Zealand framed a Groldmining, Act, which would confer something like the privileges which its clauses profess, on those who avail themselves of its provisions by taking out water licenses for head aDd tail races.

There is nothing new or novel to report. * from this place this week; but I may say that the Arrowites are preparing for a raid on our quartz resources in spring.. -One party is already at work in a reef known .as " Cornishes," in the One-Mile Creek; Crowii Terrace—the same Crown Terrace which has been so much coveted for agricultural purpo- " ses lately.