GULF OF CARPENTARIA.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 538, 3 August 1869, Page 2

GULF OF CARPENTARIA.

A new goldfield, said to have been discovered near the Gulf of Carpentaria, has of late attracted some attention in this colony. As yet, however, not many diggers have left for the scene of the reported El Dorado, the recollections of the late Gympie rush being no doubt fresh in" their minds. Independent of the country being almost wholly unknown, the climate appears to bo such as to render it advisable for intending diggers to pause ere making up their minds to proceed thither, idea of it may be formed by the following extract from a late issue of the Southern Cross :—The district in which the discovery has been made is situated far within the tropics, and many miles inland, even from the enclosed sea of Carpentaria. The heat can therefore be well imagined. Indeed, a survoyor who was not long ago working bis traverses in an interior part of Queensland, many hundred miles further south, and thereforo in all probability considerably cooler, or perhaps we ought rather to say less hot, informs us that tor many consecutive weeks the index of his selfregistering thermometer stood below I3odeg. in the daytime. During several months which he passed in that delightful climate not a single cloud had been seen, and for twenty months not a shower of rain had cooled the parched earth. The stagnant waterholes which remained in what had been the rivers were putrid, and their stench unbearable. The fish had ceased to exist, and indeed the only animals remaining were the wild dogs which fattened on the dead carcases of the flocks and herds. And this we are assured is not by any means an unusual state of things in the far interior of that country, but rather its normal condition. Moreover, as is the case with all newly opened countries, the scourge " fever and ague " rides rampant, and in the more northerly parts of the colony in question the ravages committed by this dreadful complaint have in some cases been so terrific as almost to have depopulated whole districts.