The Westport Times. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 590, 7 December 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1869.

Foil two years consecutively the closing mouths of the year have brought disaster to the doors of the inhabitants of Westport. Last year there came floods, destroying public works, and depreciating private properly. This year there has come fire, destroying uo public works, because these in Westport are now virtually nou-exis-tent, but doing infinitely greater injury to private interests and enterprise. By the two vicissitudes—by the effect of floods on the one hand and of fire on the other—the township does indeed present, at the present moment, a sorry spectacle to the visitor. It would serve much more appropriately as an extract from a picture of Pompeii or Gomorrah than as the representation of a new and thriving mining emporium. There is an air of wreck and ruin about it which would more become a degenerate and deserted village in the oldest of old countries than the newest township in the new Colony of New Zealand, as it is, or the place from which, with two exceptions, there is exported the largest amount of gold in an essentially gold-producing territory. If the reality were equal to the appearances there would be reason for depression and despair; but, fortunately, this is not the case. Appearances arc certainly against Westport. in the eyes of any man of highly a?sthetical tastes, or even of him whose peculiar proclivities arc towards pounds, shillings, and pence. The reality, however, is a much more healthy and hopeful thing than might he judged from mere appearances. In the mining prospects of the district, and in the commercial condition of the community, there is no reason for feelings of discouragement such as are likely to be the temporary efFect of the disaster of Saturday last. There is, rather, much reason for feelings of encouragement, for the cultivation of a disposition to repair losses, and for that portion of the town which has been destroyed being made to do what newspaper writers usually describe as " rising Phceuix-like from its ashes." This is not used as a mere figure of speech, or as a falsification of the facts. The prospects of the Bullcr district are at the present moment as favorable as they have been at any time since "Westport was selected as a centre of population and as a commercial depot. We shall not say that very great stress is to be laid upon the information contained in the telegrams of English news that some practical steps are at last to be taken towards the construction of the Nelson and West Coast Railway. It may be uo less a chimera than it has ever been described. But there is this element in the enterprise to be remembered—it has to be remembered that the first right to the Mount Eochfort coal-mine hns been promised to any compauy

undertaking the railway, and anyone of ordinary wisdom must knaw that if the directors of that company, now about to be formed, have no more tlian the same ordinary wisdom, they will undertake, first of all, the development' of such a sure and lasting source of revenue as that coal-mine must prove to be. That is of itself a strong thread of hope for the future of Westport. But, in a merely goldmining point of view, the prospects of the place are better at the present moment than many, including even the oldest inhabitant, can have known tliem to be at any time previously. Changed as the aspect of Addison's Flat may be apparently for the worse, there is a great amount of work to be done there yet, and it will be done on a scale and in a manner that will not fail to be remunerative. Of the upper series of terraces in the same district —as yet undeveloped, j.nd, it may be said, unprospected there is every reason to believe that something good will yet be heard. And, with regard to the Northern '■Jjprraces, we are sure that there is not at present any district on the West Coast which is so likely to bo extended, or upon which there is a more certain prospect of regular and remunerative employment. From the Inangahua district, also, we hear daily of a disposition of the residents of the Upper Grey to make it their next field of labor, with the certainty that it will not be an unprofitable one ; and, with that field developed. Westport will have an outlet for its merchandise alone which it does not now possess. Even the one sample of gold purchased by the Bank of New Zealand within the past few days would, in other parts, incite a rush of anything but contemptible dimensions. From other sources, and on account of other circumstances, we consider there are ample grounds for confidence as to the future ; and warned by the past, with regard to heavy ground rents, with regard to precautions against fire in the construction of buildings, and with regard to the possession of appliauees for the extinction of fires when they do occur, we may reasonably hope to sec people at once undertaking the work of resuscitating the commercial and architectural appearance of the town by the erection of buildings equal in numbers and design to those the loss of which there is at present, and especially at this particular season, reason to regret and to deplore. AVe are glad to see that, in several instances, this confidence in the commercial soundness of the place is already exhibited, and we do not doubt that, dispiriting as is the present disaster, these examples will have imitators both numerous and as energetically enterprising.