The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1868.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 436, 23 December 1868, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1868.

¥k lately noticed that &ome injury was likely to be done to the reputation of this district by the unaccountable omission, in the Customs returns for September, of the value of imports to Westport —an omission the fault of which lies solely with the office at Wellington. Our supposition is verified by a paragraph which appears in the West Coast Times, in which it is btated—" Westport and Brighton, whose imports last year were £17,537 and £1,596, this year import nothing at all." The same statement is made by the Otago papers. Now the fact is that the direct imports by Westport alone, during the September quarter, amounted in value to over £23,000. The West Coast Times makes a most disingenuous addition to its remarks on the subject •when it says : —" The same variation is to be remarked in the exports, which, it is scarcely necessary to say, consist, with the exception of a few hundred pounds, entirely of gold." By the " same variation " our contemporary evidently means that there was a great reduction in the export of gold, and, if the figures were at all examined, it must have been -Been by our contemporary that not only has there been a large increase in theiexport of gold, but "that Westport is, next to SJunedin and Hokitika, the largest .ex-

porter of gold in the country, and nearly as large as those two ports of greater age and assumed importance.