BULLER PROSPECTS.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 959, 5 April 1872, Page 2

BULLER PROSPECTS.

(Bx a Recruit.) Are matters ever to improve with us ? and when ? are questions which any resident in the Buller may hear half-a-dozen times a week without encountering many scores of his fellow townsmen. The answers given are seldom at variance in their meaning. That affairs will, and will shortly begin to enliven is the general belief, and I mean, with your leave, to touch upou the subject in my own unsophisticated way, to attempt to prove it. First let me enquire : —What has made the Buller such a " stringer," and what reason have we for looking forward to better times ? Secondly, what is it delays the setting in of the tide of prosperity so confidently prophesied, so patiently wailed for,, and so long in coming ? Last, when will the palmy days arrive and can anything be done to hasten their advent ? To the first of the queries, I apprehend that no one can live in our midst for a single week without being able to return a ready answer. Did ever anyone see such immense resources in the same extent of country and so little good come out of them ? Here we have a large and to a great extent totally undeveloped terrifory kuown to possess the richest resources. On the north wo have a number of gold bearing terraces a few of which

have been worked for the last three or four years, but any miner who knows thein will tell you that they have not been half worked and much more gold remains than was ever taken out of them. Wo have the Eochfort coal seam which will take a good many " foggy " visits, and other geologist's reports to convince me is not the best seam of coal on this side of the line, and will yet well repay a large outlay in its development. Then we have almost conclusive evidence of rich quartz reefs up the Waimangaroa, a district which men cannot afford to prospect on account of the difficulty of getting provisions. Next comes the'*coal in the Ngakawaho, and the districts of Mohikinui and Karamea : almost untouched. To the eastward there are the almost unexplored banks of the Buller extending some seventy or eighty miles back into the heart of the island, the Lyell, and a whole line of country lying between it and Beefton extending some thirty miles through a valley rich in quartz goldbearing quartz, alluvial deposits, fine timber and a splendid agricultural district. To go south we have Addison's Flat which generally affords, and will for years afford a rich harvest to those miners who have the perserverance and pluck necessary to a long tunnel and difficult drainage. The country lying between Addison's Flat and Charleston miles wide extending from the mountains to the beach almost totally unprospected, Charleston, Brighton, and all the well known resources of those districts, and last we have miles of gold-bearing beach, on our westward which only require a sufficient quantity of water to be brought on them to carry hundreds of men on very good wages. Such resources few districts can boast of, and iD my opinion they fully account for our residents waiting for better times. To answer fully the second question, " "What delays the setting in of a tide of prosperity" would require more space than you would perhaps afford me. I will content myself with hinting at a few of the hindrances. The advance and prosperity of a district such as this depends in a great degree upon the wealth, the develop, ing, the credit giving, and the enterprising powers of its commercial centre. Westport is the comaiercial centre of the Buller district,- but possesses no great powers of the kind. There is an almost total want of roads in the district, so that resources which in any other than a Nelson Province would be rendered capable of being developed and worked to great profit by private enterprise, remain utterly inaccessible and unremunerativo. Again there is no local representative body to reflect the public opinion, to make known with authority and some small chance of being heard, the wrongs, the difficulties, and wants of the district. This is a great and crying evil. It is a want which has been supplied with almost universal advantage to every other town of the slightest importance in New Zealand by the Municipal Corporations Act. But from West, port, Charleston, and now Reefton, the benefits of that Act are altogether excluded by the abominable business license tenure under which the townspeople hold their premises, and under which they are taxed to a most unbearable extent without any guarantee that the money or any part of it will be spent in improving their properties. Indeed it is a fact long known to the Groldfields that on them but little of it is so spent. As to the last considerations, when the improvement is likely to take place and what should be done to hasten the coming : There will be no marked change until the road to Reefton has been formed. In addition to the pushing forward of this wort, Westport must strive to have a steamboat kept at this port to tender the large steamers from the other provinces and Australia, as 'well as to connect the natural feeders, Charleston, Brighton, and the other places north and south of the port. The opening of one of our coal mines in the course of the present year would follow, and the making of roads intfl the interior would be an after conse. quence, as the population would com mand it. Then would comethefulfilmenl of our expectations. The elements o: success and prosperity are in our owi hands, and with united energy noff Westport may be made to becomi within a brief period the centre o attraction for importer, trader, ad miner.