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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 238, 7 October 1880, Page 4

«-i — ■■ '■"■-■-«» . Mr. Richard Weaver, a teamster of considerable : means, who left this district last April for the Cape of G-ood Hope (says the North Otago Times), has returned lo Duntroon a wiser and a poorer man. His experiences since he set out for fresh fields and pastures new have not been happy. The only good thing about the Cape is its climate. Ihe soil throughout his travels there, extending 700 miles northward, is poor and hungry ; the native grass is thin and wretched ; neither wood nor water for a- stretch sometimes of 100 miles ; Df draught horses there are none worthy of the name, mules being used in their place ; the bullocks on the roads are of no size or weight/ and long spans of fourteen or sixteen may be Been creeping along with little more than a ton behind them. All these evils were trying in the extreme to Mr. Weaver, but the most exasperating of all was the Dutch element so apparent in the back' country. Mr. Weaver denounces Dutchmen as the meanest, stingiest, and most intensely selfish of all the races oi mankind. They would refuse a drink of water although one's tongue was hanging a foot from one's mouth, and in : the strongest, tersest language, Mr. Weaver declared to our informant, the pleasure he would feel if ho could shoot the lot. ; The Cape Railway Bill is' thrown out ; work there is none for white men, the darkies monopolising the labour market, or nearly so ; and Mr. Weaver declares the purchase of land there is to be a delusion and a snare. Still, dissatisfied with the idea of returning to his beloved Waitaki without another attempt to retrieve his fortune, Mr. Weaver took ship to Sydney to venture a trial of the famed Teraora mines. Havihg sunk two shafts of 50 feet each, and one of 140 feet without getting even the color of gold, he sickened at the thought of prolonging his adventures, and put himself on board the first steamer for Dunedin, resolving to lay his bones in dear old New Zealand, the best of all the places he ever saw. ■=— r ' ' : ■■"»■