COAL RESERVES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 166, 13 April 1871, Page 5

COAL RESERVES.

( Communicated. ) It is a somewhat remarkable, and to the people residing in most parts of the province of Otago must be a most gratifying fact that where timber suitable for firewood and domestic purposes is scarce, a plentiful supply of lignite has boen discovered to meet the requirements of the population. In Tuapeka, Dun3tau, Ales.-

andra, and Roxburgh and other goldiield townships, this is especially the case ; and so far as we are aware we feel inclined to question if there is any place pos^e^ing a more extensive and easily procurable supply of first-class coal than the Teviofc portion of the Mount Hen 'er diitiict. Within a distance of about four miles from the township of Roxburgh there is a large measure of uoal extending ovor an area, of about one thousand acres, in several parts of which the co il crops out on the surface ; and adjacent to this we have noticed for years past an extensive seam of coal has been, and still continues, burning. No stranger can travel over this tract of land without being fully convinced of the existence of a most extensive deposit of coal. Two parties have already secured coal mining leases of different parts of the ground to which we refer, and are in constant work carting coal to various parts of the district. Besides this several miners, residing in the immediate neighbourhood, declare the ground to be auriferous. In the face of these, facts it is not at all surpiisingto find that Messrs. Cargill and Anderson, the lessees of the run, have lodged applications under the provisions of the notorious Hundreds Regulations Amendment Act, 1870, for 640 acres, marked off in such a manner as to include the very heart of this valuable coal bad, and embracing an estate which, in the course of a very few years, will, in thp event of first-class roads or tramway being formed between Lawrence and Clyde, be worth not less than £50,000 ; for, with cheap and easy carriage, we do not doubt the future supply of coal for several of our rising up-country townships will be procured from the locality to' which we refer. Messrs. Cargill and Anderson's application came on for hearing, at Roxburgh, on the the Ist of April, and we trust that, so far as they are concerned, it may prove to be a traditionary Ist of April transaction. The Warden has adjourned the case, in order to obtain a surveyor's report. We are somewhat surpiised that our friends in Mount Bsnger display such an amount of apathy, when interests so vital to them are at stake. We have heard that thair ap parent apathy is not on account of their ignorance of the value and importance of the subject in question, but ma}' be tn cod to the fact that most of them ara owners of a few head of cattle grazing on suffer ence on Messrs. Cargill and Anderson's run, and they are consequently loth to do anything which might give offence to those gentlemen. We, however, trust that such trivial considerations will no longer have any weight with them, and that they will bestir themselves and oppose the granting of such a most unjust monopoly to the runholders. We ht-lieve the Mount Benger people have only to direct tho attention to the matter of th u ir a'ole representative in the Council and Assembly (Bradshaw), in order to avert this threatened act of injustice.