THE INANGAHUA.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 898, 9 December 1871, Page 2

THE INANGAHUA.

The Grey Valley correspondent of the " Argus" writes : * The news from the ■ mining districts is, of course, most important from Murray Creek and the Inangahua quartz reefs. It is now fairly established that an immense field for the safe investment of capital, and the profitable employment of labor, has been opened up. The place is beginning to be properly appreciated, and the reliable accounts coming from all sources of the bona fide and lart;e prices paid for interests is a sufficient proof. Shares have changed hands at high prices in localities in which an interest could scarcely be given away a few months ago, and yet it is a fact, that those shares were intrinsically as valuable then as they are now. This is the effect of the introduction of capital, and still there are men, holding rich claims, who cannot see that they must eventually call in the capitalist to assist them to develope their properties, and to make their fortunes. These men have bitherto held aloof, because they think that if the capitalist once got in, the working-man must go out, but the scales are gradually falling from their eyes and they are becoming fewer in number every day. It is needless to enter into details of the progress that the several lines of reef are making, because such information is now getting stale. It has been repeated so often that, to use a racingcard phrase, with an alteration, the "numbers of the reefs, with the reefers, the colors they are getting, and tho prizes they gain," are known by rote all over the country. The few hardy pioneers who first opened this splendid field, and the far-seeing capitalists who assisted them to make known its value, have manfully done their work, but what have the Government, to which unfortunately it belongs, done towards its development? Why nothing, as usual. Machinery has been brought on to the ground at an enormous expense, provisions are famine prices, the necessaries of life at other places are considered luxuries, and all for the want of roads and other means of communication. In any other part of the world, the Government which would be fortunate enough to possess such a maguificent public property within its territory would beg, borrow, or " annex" money ta enable tha discoverers of so much wealth to render it available for the use of the community. Because the people of Nelson were " had" at Wungapeka, which was eutirely their own fault, the Government of Nelson ara content to join them in their lamentations, and sit under their own fig and mulberry trees, and talk of those dreadful diggings and the people who live on them as being continually wanting money spent on their odious tracks, but " we won't do it sir, the more settled districts require fostering, the miners are a wandering and vagabond race of people, and we don't see why we should spend our money on them." That was the remark made by one of these wiseacres at Nelson recently, at a meeting with reference to the Nelson and Foxhill railway.