THE EXODUS TO NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealander, Volume XVIII, Issue 1725, 20 September 1862, Page 5

THE EXODUS TO NEW ZEALAND.

[From the " Melbourne Argus," Auguit 2U.] With the first blush of spring, the restlessness which diggers seem unable to resist has revived. Longing anticipations of newer fields have broken out and the railway stations and piers present from day to day that least desirable of all spectacles, groups of hard-working men on their way to other colonies, to try the chances of fortune in fresh gold fields. Coromandel seems, for the time, the locality towards which the rush is setting in, Ota"o having lost its short-lived attractions, the Lachlan being admittedly overdone, and the charm that invested British Columbia having dissolved as rapidly as it arose. At the risk of the imputation of interested motives, we must ask whether those who are leaving our shores are well advised. Have they considered in all its lights what they are about ? It is known on every gold-field that, of the many who rushed away from Victoria last season, few succeeded in realizing their while a large proportion were only too glad to make their way back, late in the year, to the scenes they had deserted. What are the superior attractions of Coromandel ? It is a settlement of which little is known, and that has been visited by few. Its important e in the scale of gold-fields has yet to be ascertained. It has been stated that the natives of the district were for a time opposed to the settlement of European miners amongst them, and resisted the overtures made to them for the use of the land. It has also been i-eported that auriferous ground exists there, and that rich quart/ reefs have been traced. That is the whole sum and substance of the information of which the public is actually in possession! Possibly its scantiness, and the opposition of the Maoris to the intrusion of diggers, are the seductive influences miners are unable to resist. But surely the proposition the latter put to themselves deserves more investigation before homes are broken up and claims abandoned ; and the attractions of the rival fields should be fairly weighed before the shores of Victoria are deserted for those of another colonvIf the reports respecting Coromandel are placed in the scale with those that come to us on all hands fromour own fields, they will be fairly and honestly outweighed. If we turn to the pages of the country journals during the last ten days, we find them reporting yields of gold, from newly-found reefs, so large that it is impossible they can be surpassed by the quartz of Coromandel, or any other gold-field of the planet we inhabit. A few days ago it was the MTvor district which had its tale of golden stores to tell, the prospectors on the Balmoral Reef havin<* struck quartz which contained more gold than stone. A bucket of samples was carried into Heathcote as rich as have ever been seen in the colony, soma of the stones literally hanging together by golden threads. Two or three weeks previously splendid reefs were discovered in four different localities of the Sandhurst district. Last week, Mai don was the scene of a similar piece of good fortune to a party of miners; and this week, a rush on a large scale has set in to Mount Greenock, near Talbot, where some of the noblest specimens ever produced in this or any other country have been taken from the surface of a reef, the discovery of which is scarcely forty-eight hours old. The most Blowing report from Coromandel does not equal those accidental evidences of the richness of the reefs constantly being opened up in Victoria. From one or the oldest digging districts in the co i onv —Dunolly—we learn that twenty-six new reefs have been opened up since the. last day of May ; and several of them, situated far apart, north and south of the township, are reported as unusually rich. We report to-day a remarkable cru.-diingfrom quartz taken from a claim on one of the Inglewood reefs, which was abandoned more than once. From Barkly and Redbank new silver reefs are reported. Of the Jord&n Diggings, again, comparatively little is known, but specimens of very valuable quartz have been shown in Melbourne, from reefs on the Dividing Range, now covered with srow, that ought to be quite as tempting to the dissatisfied digger as any •c ever obtained in Coromandel or elsewhere. It needs but a glance, indeed, round our own gold-fields, and a fair estimate of the quartz they produce and the chances they offer, to prove that a more golden country does not mml. We hnvo no hostfle natives, it is true, to excite by their opposition the appetite of our diggers for the marvellous, and beget hopes of golden claims that are not fated to be realised. Victoria, on the contrary, lies open to the digger, who may prospect wheresoever he chooses. No armed sentry stands in the way to warn off the adventurer, and there is no chief's permission to dig to be asked or bought. Wood and water can be found everywhere, and we enjoy the advantage of a climate which, by comparison, is magnificent. It is difficult to comprehend why those advantages should be foregone, and the blind goddess so blindly followed, on the mere rumour that a goldfiel.l baa been found in another land. The Jordan alone presents chances superior, so far as our information goes, to those offered in any portion of New Zealand. If the enchantment lies in distance, why should the ironbark ranges and quartz-reefs of the Flinders and Thomson, reported by Wills and Landsborough, be less regarded than reports from fields which shipowners, speculators in passenger traffic, owners of property, and " loose fish" of many kinds, have a direct interest in praising—in gilding the information they possess as they pass it on ? It must be admitted that, up to the present hour, no adequate reasons have been given for a rush to Coromandel, while all past experience goes to show that the industrious miner can command at least moderate success, with the chance of a splendid result to his labours, in Victoria.