BALD HILL FLAT, &c.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 287, 31 July 1873, Page 8

BALD HILL FLAT, &c.

(To the Editor.) Sir, — In reply to the letter signed " M. J. M'Ginnis." which appeared in your issue of the 17th inst., I may inform the writer that at the time the Bald Hill Flat was surveyed for agricultural lease (1867), goldfields members were not in the habit of forwarding copies of Gohltiekls Acts to their constituents in order to obtain their opinions; and miners, as a body, derived their information of the laws affecting them from the copies of the regulations. If Mr. M'Ginnis will refer to the regulations published in 1868, he will find that all that portion of the Groldfields Act, 1866, relating to agricultural leases is omitted — the only information given on the subject being the agricultural lease regulations, in which there is not one word referring to the right to purchase ; and I may further state that had those regulations been carried out in their integrity, much of the antagonism between the miners and the leaseholders would have been prevented. "With reference to the supply of water from Butchers Creek, the creek workers had the prior right to two sluice heads, and the surplus was taken up by two different races, one leading on to Bald Hill Flat and the other (the Caledonian) leading in the opposite direction. The owners of the Bald Hill Flat race, while actually at work sluicing, earned £4 per week per man, but the supply of water bein<j insufficient for both races occasioned constant litigation, until the Caledonian company settled tho question by purchasing the Bald Hill wafer rights, and since that time (about eight years since) that source of supply has not been available for the Flat. Bald Hill Flat, like most sluicing ground, requires a considerable amount of preliminary work before any returns can be expected, and miners were not likely to enter into such a speculation with the prospect before them of being idle for a third part of the year. Suppose for the sake of argument that Kemp's race is all that Mr M'Ginnis states it to be, how would be like to be limited to a supply of two sluice heads of water for eight months in the year. Or, to put a stronger case, suppose the conditions of the water supply to bo reversed, and that the race owners had a prior right to two sluice heads of water, and that the creek workers had to depend on the surplus water, would those great tail races, which have been brought before our admiring gaze, even have been constructed ? There are plenty people in the district who are acquainted with tho nature of the water supply and I leave them to answer the question. .With respect to the proposed Sludge Channel, a public meeting was called to discuss the question ; the meeting was held within a few yards of the proposed line of the channel, and the parsons who attended were all more or less acquainted with the ground. The project may have been either good or bad, but it requires a peculiarly constituted mind to discover wherein consists the "dirty nature of the transaction." •' To the pure all things are pure," and some men appear to be living proofs that the converse of that aphorism is equally true. The statement that the G-orge Creek Co. were to bo paid for the supply of water used in constructing the channel is simply untrue, and the comments made tlieceon are consequently bosh. Mr, M'Grinnis appears to have solicited as bis " Guide, philosopher, and friend " an individual to whom the mere men-

tion of Bald Hill Flat causes an attack of temporary insanity ; but I would be sorry to think that Mr. M'Ginnis' admiration carried him so far as to induce him to use quotations from his friends idiotic attempts at wit, that appeared in the columns of the *' Dunstan Times." It is only charity to suppose that the individual referred to is the actual writer of the letter, and that Mr. M'Grinnis is author of nothing but the signature. — I am, &c, Miner's Eight.