MINING INTELLIGENCE.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 620, 12 July 1851, Page 3

MINING INTELLIGENCE.

[From the Bathurst Free Press.] If it were possible that a human being could be elevated to some given point in the atmosphere, from which he could command a bird’s eye view of the Ophir diggings, from all we can learn, they would bear no inapt resemblance to an ant’s nest, to and from which by numerous tracks and avenues the busy stir of animal life was constantly thronging. Or rather, the diggings may be regarded as a vast reservoir of human industry towards which the surrounding country is daily pouring its contributions of labour by tributary steams. Daily arrivals of all ranks and classes from the metropolis are taking place. Nothing is Talked—of, dreamt of, but gold. There are few single men left in Bathurst, and the great majority of the married ones remain behind from sheer necessity. la a few weeks, perhaps days, we expect Batburst, like San Francisco at the outbreak of the California goldfever, will become a community of women. In short we may hope everything, fear many things, but calculate upon nothing with safety, but gold. For good or for evil, for weal or for woe, the truth must be told. Notwithstanding the numberless cautions and warnings, which are poured upon us at the corners of the streets, not to ruin the district by inflaming men's minds, we are constrained to follow one of two courses —either to remain silent or write what we know. As we cannot afford to adopt the former course we e’en choose the latter and leave the consequences to a righteous Providence. So far from doing an injury by speaking vf things as they are, we shall be conferring a public benefit bv correcting the tliousand-and-one tales of absurdity and exaggeration which are everywhere afloat. From the variety and respectability of our sources of information, we can vouch for the correctness, as nearly as correctness can be arrived at, of the following details. At ths present time there are about 1000 people at the mines, and the number is daily increasing. A friend of ours, who returned thence a few days ago, informed us that he met 72 on the road from Bathur/it, and when it is considered that Ophir is the centre of an immense circle from which maby new trodden roads ramate in all directions, and that a

steady stream of human beings is daily flowing from each, some idea may be formed of the rapid increase of the digging population. About three miles of a frontage are occupied with this busy throng. Every village of the surrounding country is emptying itself, or sending forth its quota to the great gathering. From a letter received from Carcoar by the last mail, we learn that it is nearly deserted. Fresh faces are to be daily seen in our streets which by the following day have disappeared, their places being supplied by others; and if our readers are anxious to know what has become of them, we simply tell them that they are off to the diggings. A few days ago, a band of about a dozen women left Bathurst for the diggings, and since that time several small knots of females have started for that locality, where we are informed they drive a profitable trade by the washing-tub. Tents and gunyas are rearing their heads in every quarter, but hundreds receive no other protection from the weather than a few boughs thrown together after the fashion of a blackfellow’s mansion. In fact the whole settlement has the appearance of a vast aboriginal camp. The precipitous ridges on either side of the creek are studded with horses by the hundred, which after a few days’ naturalization to their new homes, begin to look as rugged and haggard as their masters. The °*gg’ n g s commence at the junction of the Summerhill and Lewis’ Ponds Creek, and extend downwards towards the Macquarie.

Several stores have been opened, and it is said are doing a roaring trade, taking gold in payment of their goods. The neighbouring flocks supply the miners with mutton, and we hear that it is in contemplation to erect stock-yards to slaughter cattle in. Meat readily fetches 4d. per pound., and we have heard several instances in which enormous prices have been given for bread. From the miserable shelter and generally inadequate outfit of scores, whom the mania has allured thither, there can be little doubt that many are paving their wav to the grave. And whilst on this part of our subject, we will tender a little advice to intending miners. Before going to Ophir, you must recollect that it is a miserable cold place and that you require not only plenty of warm bedding, but a tarpauling or some such convenience for shelter—that as there is abundance of hard work before you, in the performance of which you are sure to get wet, and during a portion of the time must stand in the water, plenty of food is an indispensable requisite. Again, a regular set of tools, comprising shovels, pickaxes, a crowbar, tindishes for ladling the water, a cradle, &c., is absolutely necessary. If you have means to obtain all these you may stand your chance of finding more or less of the auriferous wealth of Ophir ; if not, stop at home and mind your ordinary business, if you have any to mind, and we will hazard a guess that in the end you will be as rich as the gold-digger, with perhaps a much sounder constitution. Even at the present time there are much hunger and suffering which do not meet the eye. On Tuesday last, C. H. Green, Esq., Commissioner of Crown Lands for this district, started for the diggings, accompanied by the District Inspector of the Police, Major Wentworth, and the Chief Constable, with the object of serving notices to the miners that they were trespassing. As there appears to have been no sincere intention of interfering with the men, the real purpose of the visit most probably was to assert the rights of the Crown in a formal manner. Whilst there, Mr. Green observed two men at work, who in a short space of time took out several lumps of gold weighing about a pound. On Thursday we inspected ten parcels of the precious metal, which had been purchased bv Mr. Austin from as many individuals, all of whom appear to have been unusually successful. For most of these samples Mr. Austin paid at the rate of £3: 4s. per ounce. One was marked Charles Collins—one of two men who had been absent from home 50 hours, including the journey to and from the mines. Opposite his name the sum of £lO :12 : 1 was marked as the amount paid for the parcel, which consisted of seven or eight lumps al! flat, the largest of them weighing something under 2 ounces. These pieces were found in the crevices of rocks. Another parcel, consisting principally of small pieces and dust, had been brought in by a butcher who goes by the name of Lankey. It was marked 14j ounces, and was the produce of five men’s labour for two and a half days. For this parcel the respectable sum of £44 : 10s. had been paid. Another marked Edward Bunnan, ?oz. Sdwts. 2grs. had £2l marked opposite. Whilst in Mr. Austin’s store Mr. Neil Stewart, nephew of Major-General Stewart, came with the produce of what he informed us was a day’s severe toil. It was weighed on the counter, and valued at £2:2s, A man named Smith is said to have found a piece of about four ounces in weight, Mr, Thomas Piper, son of Captain Piper, has a piece worth about £5. Mr. Horan, publican, who had been at work in company with others

Having stated a few facts, it is our duty to warn the public against leaping at hasty conclusions. The success of ten or a dozen men is not to be understood as the guage by which the luck of all is to be measured, and although the general impression of respectable people seems to be that most of the diggers are procuring more or less gold in retqrn for their labour, it must be recollected that there are hundreds of whose success or failure we arg unable to speak; that there are many cases of failure we have been repeatedly informed, and know of instances in which shepherds have been hired at the diggings, who have

beexi starved and worked into intense disgust against gold finding, and left the place much poorer thap they arrived at it. Indeed it would almost appear probable that the future progress of this district is to be purchased at the expense pf the prosperity of the neighbouring district—a consummation which °we should deplore equally with opr neighbours. One effect of the discovery is a general rise of wages, and ip some cases men are demanding rates which arc not only monstrously unreasonable, but absolutely ruinous to the employers. Storekeepers are very careless about selling at all, but when they do sell the prices are most exorbitantly high. The labourmarket is in chaotic confusion, and if wages are to be regulated by the supposed profits of gold-digging, there is an end to every other

pursuit, we must, in such case, all pack up and start for the land of Qphir. Blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, wheelwrights, and in some cases storekeepers, are left to the management of their own business. _ From the foregoing relation of facts, some idea may be formed of the state of pur town and district. In sober seriousness, “ the •times are out of joint.” The wisest men are mere children in the matter, and are as little aware how it will end. At the present time many of the poor people of the town are suffering for want of bread, yet the . accursed thirst for gold is impelling, with headlong madness, hundreds away from their comfortable homes or hired service, where their bodily wants were safely provided for. Most certainly must we conclude that whatever of good comes out of the discovery, it belongs to the future. °

The following laconic epistle came to hand yesterday from a friend : —“Dear Sir, —People are coming here by hundreds. If no other mines be discovered it will soon be a case wHh us All the good ground is taken up, and will soon be worked out. Even now we are treading on each other’s toes. It is a dreadfully hard life even for the strongest. I am well myself, and doing well. Your's truly,

[From the Southern Cross, July 24.] The excitement is not one jot less t^a n that which the Maukin and Emma had acquainted US of. Tnrlpprl innvoaoo .1 “J Vi UMUQIIItJ appears tp grow with what it is feeding on and Sydney seehjs to be rapidly going out of town,- Mew of all classes and conditioqs were off for the diggings. The Messrs. Byrnes, tfie Paramatta cloth factors, advertize for weavers at 25 per cent, advance oq former wages which advance those in their employ had refused. Advertisements are also made to parties desirous of proceeding tp the dh, of n | S l2°^ach nS '° tkem e? P en ®e

The daily charge for a horse-feed whilst R Qphir” is 135., and every thing, wuether in Sydney, Bathurst, o r on the road are at famine prices • in fact men scarcely know what sums to demand. The Hqnter River Company have raised the fares in their steamers from the 2nd inst,, and M'Namara, me snip-broker, whilst he intimates that his vessels will sail as usual for the various Colonial ports, significantly adds, only making ‘allowance for the increased nite of wages, p ro. Visions, Sfc. The advertizing columns of the pydney shipping are mightily shrunk, and no doubt, as was the case in San Francisco, many vessels will of necessity be laid up. The Bathurst Free, Press speaks with great force and truth of the self-delqsions, which folks at a distance are practising, by leaving a certain and a comfortably hoiqe, for a very uncertain and miserable search for gold. Those doing well are yarning from 15s. to 20s. a-day. They who are remarkably fortunate may touch about 4Qs. sut these are the prizes o f this deceitfyi lottery, for the 'fl?.?®? " rs barely yarning ordyiqry wages—

for about eight hours, returned to town on Monday last with 5| ounces, a great portion of which had been produced from the very top of the ridge, the sods and earth having been conveyed to the creek in buckets to be washed. Dr. M‘Hattie dug and washed most vigorously for about two hours on Monday last, and brought home 12s. worth of the precious metal. As Mr. Austin is at present tbe only buyer in town to any extent, we may safely conclude that the great bulk of whatever gold may have been dug still remains at the mines. Altogether we have not seen more than 51bs. in the town.

many are totally unable to draw their ration? —and the sufferings and privations of these unfortunates, both in the public journals and private letters, are painted in characters of the darkest Gold has already been stained with blood, a man from Parramatta named M'Cabe having been wantonly murdered. Agriculture continues to be neglected ; and an idea of the consequent alarm, urged with unavailing appeals to rational industry—appeals from which our New Zealand yeomanry would do well to profit—may be gathered from the following golden sentence ;—

Wheat is Gold, and the Produce of the J ormer wup Reap Aijujjdance of The Latter! Perhaps the most graphic account of “Ophir” was given, at a Public Meeting qt Paramatta, by Mr. Byrnes, who stated the present diggings to extend pver two miles, and who demonstrated that, if £1 per day might be accounted a fair day’s gain, that flour, beef, mutton, sugar, and all the necesf saries of life, being at golden figures, the difference between the gains of moderately suc-

cessful gold huntiqg and steady labour would be found to be marvellously small. Mr. Byrnes takes the view of this discovery

as we ourselves at first expressed. He sees immense future gain fraught with much immediate ruin to the colony, and warns the stockholders qnd farmers of New South Wales to be prepared for the worst.

IVJr. Haj-greaves, the discoverer of these mines, has been rewarded with a gratuity of £5OO, and the appointment of Government Prospector” to search for others. Not a shilling of the 30s, license fee has been, or is likely to be, paid. lhe Maitland folks have subscribed and offered a reward to any one finding a gqld neld in their district. The much coveted metal is said to have been detected in the purragorang, as well as in the Liverpool Ranges, and indeed every Range appears to have its own particular report. The intense cold and inclemency of the jeather was, according to official statements, driving back the exhausted hunters bv hundreds from Bathurst. Their places, however, weie being filled by thousands of new churls on whom the/euer heat was strong; so that the Summer Hill Creek continued to fill so uncomfortably that those already in occupatiou were about to resist any further intrusion. To judge by the conflicting descriptions, it is clear that much disappointment and intense misery prevail.

Intelligence from the Cape to the 17th April had reached Sydney, Sir H. Smith iad found disaffection so strongly implanted in a portion of the Cape Corps, that he paraded, disarmed, and disgraced the regiment, oir Harry had, notwithstanding, been flogging the Kaffirs soundly.

The Hunter’s River Company entered into contract with the Messrs. Caird of Glasgow for two iron steam vessels with all the modern improvements, to perform not less than 10 knotsan hour. These vessels, deliverable on the 20th September, are to be respectively °f 493 tons, 200 horse-power, and 340 tons, |2O horse-power. ’