THE KIMBERLEY GOLDFIDLDS

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2448, 10 November 1886, Page 2

THE KIMBERLEY GOLDFIDLDS

The following letter from Mr T. R. Wilton, who left Mantorton for the goldfields has boon kindly placed at our disposal : 309 miles from Derby, Mount George, Septembor 11,1886, I now sit doivn to write you a few lines to let you know how things are getting on here, and I hops they will find you quite well as they leave me at prosent, only very tirod of this journey, but it is nearly ovor now as far as reaching the diggings is concerned, and it is nearly time, for it is beginning to seem as if this journey was going on (or ever. We have been six weeks out from Derby now, and are still seventy miles from the fields. Men are leaving the fields in hundreds, and if what they say is true, it has been one of the greatest swindles that has ever been worked in the colonies, for men have come here in thousands, and brought horses and drays and ofcherthings, and they say there is no goldfields there at all. The wholo of the road is lined with dead horses and drays and other things. To give you an idea how things have gone down here, there is a new waggon and six sets of harness and two good horses for sale a few miles above us, and the man only wants £2O for the lot, aud can't sell them at that. A month ago money would not have bought them, but a man can get plenty of drays now for nothing along this road, so no one will buy. lam writing these few lines to you after my mates are turned in. There are four of us-Taylor and two others. I don't know what we Bball do if the field is a quarter as bad as men who we meet every day on their way back say it is. But we will have a look at it for ourselves. The weather is getting very hot here now, but it seems healthy enough. Lots of the men who came with us, passed us yesterday on their way back. They stopped on the field a week. Tucker is very cheap up here now. There are bo many leaving the fields and selling their goods for what they can get, The flies, ants, and mosquitoa are enough to drive a man mad. Lota of the men we meet seem a bit gone in their minds, for they tell us all sorts of yarns about the road, I have seen a few blacks but not many. It is a very fair road for a country like this, and passes through Borne of the finest land in the world, and some of it is the most barron that could be seen. We will get on the diggings with about two months tucker and twonty-five sovereigns between us, and as food is so cheap we can see tho wet season through if the field is any good at all. If the diggings are as bad as they Bay I expect we shall go back to Derby and try and get away down to Champion Bay as there is a lot of railway work going on down there, That will be our only chance, As soon as I get" on the' fields 1 will let you knowkhow how thipgs are.