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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 54, 4 March 1874, Page 2

Colonial Prize ''Firing. — The Taranaki, this evening, will lake Sergeant J. A. Burn, and Privates Grossman and Moore, all of the City Rifles, to Wellington, en route for Napier, where the firing for the colonial prizes is to take place this year. We wish our representatives every success. Nelson Artillery Company. — The firing for the second set of District Prizes will take place to-morrow morning, commencing at half-past five. Nelson City Rifles. — At a full meeting of the members of this Company held at the Drill Shed last night, C. L. Maclean, Eeq , was unanimously elected as Captain, vice G. B. Sinclair, resigned. Outward Mail. — The next mail, via San Francisco, will be despatched from Nelson to Onehunga by the Wellington od Tuesday next, the 10th inst. The Anatori Reefs.— We have been supplied by one whom we have every reason to consider an excellent authority, with the following facts regarding the Anatori reefs: — About six months a party of two men found some large blocks of quartz, (in which gold was visible), in a small gully where they were engaged in alluvial digging. They then joined with others in making a party of nine to endeavor to find where the stone came from, and after some search they disco veied that the side of the gully was covered with a hard cement wash, and that every piece of quartz contained gold. They then applied for a prospecting area which was granted, and commenced washing, when they obtained in six weeks about 4Oozs of gold, besides what they got from the richest [of the specimens, which were crushed in a mortar, the others that were not so good being laid aside. After working up the side some distance, the cement gave out. They then drove into the hill and discovered the reef, from which a great deal of the ton just crushed was obtained. At the time the stone was forwarded to Collingwood not more than four tons of quartz had been got from the actual reef, since which it has been further developed, and now shows in the end of the drive a well-defined reef five feet !ia thickness, and some parcels taken indiscriminately from the heap and crushed have given remarkably good results. Upper Moutere. — There is now lying on the wharf, waiting for conveyance to the Moutere, a ten-horee power steam engine for the sawmills of Messrs Prestidge Brothers, and another is expected by the next steamer from Melbourne for the Messrs Bensemann of the same place. Already there are several mills at work in this district, which is rapidly becoming important as a timber-producing locality. Taranaki. — A correspondent of the Dunedin Star writes as follows: — " Taranaki is a peculiar Province, inhabited by a peculiar people. It contains some 2,300,000 acres of land, and an European population of about 5,000 souls, having a revenue of 20s per head per inhabitant. It was founded in the year 1841, and seems to have made no more progress than if its first European settlers had arrived there twenty years later. The land obtained in the Province by purchase or confiscation amounts only to 300,000 acres, the millions still belonging to' the various tribes inhabiting the province. The dwellers in Taranaki appear to- be principally the original immigrants and their descendants. No fresh blood has been infiltrated into the province for the last twenty years. From Patea to the Waitara all the people appear to be related to each other. Most of the original settlers came from the counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall j and the province Beems to have been preserved as an antipodean "in-and-in" west-country breeding ground. It is a province where still life, clotted cream, wooden ploughshares, mead, and honey abound; where ties of relationship do not count for nought; where Tom' will resent an injury to Fanny, and Fanny will champion Tom against the charge of rusticity, condone the cut of his coat, and champion the correctness of the antiquated opinions bo has iuherited from his grandfather. The means of living are so easily obtained that men pause a day or two before they muke up their minds to become employed io manual labor, even for themselves. The climate, perhaps, may be euervaliDg; but butter sells for sixpence the pound, eggs for sixpence the dozen, and other comestibles at a Bimilar rate. Four-fifths of all the old settlers being landowners, further tends to induce independence of other men's labor. You see no rags, poverty , or destitution in the province; the police have no vagrants Io apprehend. If Provincial policemen in New Zealand anywhere have a sinecure, it is here. The people all knowing each other in this clovernook, a straDger attracts immediate attention. His antecedents and business are carefully inquired after; the male population strive to ascertain what balance he has at his bankers, what lands and beeves he possesses elsewhere; the softer sex learn whether he is married or Bingle ; and if found to be without incumbrance consider if he may be regarded as an eligible parti. The province is called the garden ojf. New Zealand. The name is apropos. It is too fertile to induce energy. We never expect to become millionaires,

the people exclaim, but contentment h great gain. In politics, the province is split up into two factions — the Carrington and Atkinson parties. It is over-represented for its population in the Parliament, sending three raeml era to the House of Representatives. The reason given for this large Parliament staff is rather unique. It sends one member on account of its past misfortunes ; another to represent its present position; nnd a third, to stand sponsor for iis unborn prosperity. The province is as a parish — its politicians are as vestry men — and neither progress, wealth, nor energy will be manifest until its numbers are increased, and the heart-burnings of its political cliques at an end." At the opening of the Mataura railway, His Excellency Governor Weld in returning thanks for the manner in which his health had been drunk said: — " I am here as one of yourselves — as one of the old3Bt colonists in this large assembly. In justification of this broad assertion I may say that I took up my residence in the ' bush' of New Zealand in 1844, and during many years worked my way up through the various gradations incidental to the life of a colonist. I should be entirely destitute of feeling if I did not experience seDSationg, of pleasuro at once more finding myself in New Zealand. It is indeed my greatest pride to have taken part in the framing of those institutions' which have conJuced to the prosperity of which proofa have met me on every hand. Your chairman spoke of Western Australia. That colony is a baby compared with New Zealand— it is only beginning to walk alone. It has been and is my desire to teach It to walk in the path it 3 sister has trodden. It is not for me to say whether my efforts have been crowned with success." The health of the Parliament of New Zealand was then proposed, coupled with the name of Governor Weld, to which His Excellency replied that "he had again an unexpected honor, that of returning thanks for an unforeseen toast. He could only say that he had long tnken a deep interest in New Zealand affairs; that it was so long ago as 1854, when be for the first time was returned to a seat in the New Zealand Parliament — a seat which he had held with but brief intermissions till 1865, when he retired on account of ill-health. When he spoke of the pleasure he felt as an old New Zealand settler, it was not without a recollection of the compensation that attended the always arduous and oft-times irksome work of a member of Parliament. There were naturally many differences and some sharp passages at arms, but he could remember no incideut in which he was not well received by that Parliament, nor any in which unpleasant personalities had been brought to bear, the opposition being to the policy, not to the person. More than this: iv every part of the world in which he had travelled — Great Britain or the neighboring colonies — he had found butone opinion, that the character of the New Zealand Parliament stood as high as that of any under the Imperial rule. He did not say these things to flatter — it was well known he was not in the habit of doing so, but be would say that the New Zealand Parliament would highly and honorably compare with that of any new country in the world. One thing more he desired to aay. It was a good thing to keep a sharp look-out for the faults and short comings of their representatives; it was a healthy sign. But they must remember that theirs was an arduous task, and should not, even if they occasionally went ostray, attribute improper motives. They should place confidence in their public men; they bad indeed done so, and that was one reason why New Zealand politicians had risen to a higher status than those of most other countries."