THE NEW RUSH.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 640, 2 April 1870, Page 2

THE NEW RUSH.

Notwithstanding the desire to be as accurate and as mild as possible in stating the probable value of the ground which has been rushed this week on the south side of the Buller, there seems to b« a fatality about some of our figures sufficient to set somebody's teeth on edge. We notice that we have done an injustice to the intelligence of Matthew Steele, and to the probable amount of his income for the next few months as a claim-holder on the new ground. We misrepresented his estimate of the value of the ground he had tried, and, of course, exaggerated it; (it is a cardinal point of faith with diggers that newspapers always exaggerate.) "What we should have said was that he estimated the ground to be worth about half an ounce per day to him and his mate — not half an ounce to each of them, as the sentence implied, though for his sake we hope it will be so. The context would show that this was his meaning, and ought to have been ours in print as it was in thought. It is similar to the estimate of. all those who have tested the ground and mean to work it. The general expression, after the partial prospecting which the claims got on Wednesday, was that, as a whole, it is wages' ground, and that "it is going to be worked." Eor those who, through good and evil report, have stuck to their claims since the beginning of the rush, the circumstances have been most unfavorable. There has not been a week of

more broken weather for several months past, and a night ago the rain, hail, and cold culminated into something like a caution to much higher forms of life than young snakes. The symptoms for an hour or two were as it a waterspout had burst' over Westport, and yesterday the hill-tops were snow-clad, and every hole in the new ground was a well-filled water-tank. This has naturally impeded prospecting, and some who are claimholdeis elsewhere have abandoned ground from which they only have hopes of drawing small wages; Others, however, are holding their claims ; numerous boatß, loaded with diggers, have crossed tho river each morning; paddocks are being put down ; tail-races are being cut; and others are " pegging out" further down the lead to the southward. One prospector has begun to sink from the pakihi, on the supposition that there may be a better lead beneath, and a few contemplate crying closer into, or under, the terrace at the foot of which the present welldefined lead lies.

With favorable weather, some amount of work and prospecting will be done before Tuesday, and, though there is nothing in the character of the ground to be excessively jubilant over, it is full expected that, with every day's work, it will be demonstrated that the week has developed a valuable estate from which a fair income will be for some time drawn by Westport and those who work it.