FOUND AT LAST.

Press, Volume IV, Issue 448, 6 April 1864, Page 2

FOUND AT LAST.

So gold has been found in the artesian well in Colombo-street. It is useless to laugh at Canterbury. The pilgrims, after all, really do know how to do the thing ; not in the rude and ungainly ■ways of ordinary colonists, but with a refinement and discretion characteristic of aristocratic self-possession. Just see how we have managed our gold finding. We don't go up into the mountains, and live like pigs or moas, and shiver in snow and frost, and twiddle our dirty thumbs in idleness during the droughts of summer and have all our works washed away in the floods of winter, and pay £150 a ton for carting our flour over impassable roads, and get stuck-up and robbed of our gold as we take it back to town. We don't find our gold first, and then build our town afterwards in a slovenly, hurry-skurry sort of a way, amid dirt and discomfort unspeakable. Not at all; this is how the pilgrims to it. They first settle themselves down comfortably, build a neat little town, arrange for ample supplies, begin a railroad, make due preparations, and then—discover gold just under the town. That is the way to do the thing like gentlemen. Here you will shortly see the comfortable merchant leaving his breakfast table with a lad carrying his pick and shovel behind him, and a pair of india-rubber galoshes sticking out of Ms great coat pocket; the worthy man is going to dig for an hour or two, just for a morning's amusement, as he would go trout fishing elsewhere. He will only go to the next street, and when ho has filled his portmonnaie with nuggets, he will call in at his bankers on his way home to dinner, and pay in his little pile to his account. Christchurch is sitting it would seem comfortably on a sort of strong box of the precious metal, which it quietly opens when it wants a pound or two for immediate use. So little did Canterkm-y care about the thing till all was ready, that it kept a special geologist to assure mankind that there was no gold here at all. But that was all a ruse just to keep folks quiet till j the City Council was at work, and a proper and efficient Lord Mayor was elected. By the way it may be remembered the Lord Mayor wanted the I second artesian well to be put opposite his own room 9. Now we know why—sly dog! It was not water His Worship was looking to, but the golden stream he knew was about to be tapped. It is not quite certain, but it is fnlly expected, that digging will not be J necessary at all. A plan is in preparation by which J the mud in which the precious ore is deposited will !be regularly discharged by the artesian springs, so that we shall only have to apply a bncket to the spout to get as much gold as we want. There will be no rush, no discomfort, all will be conducted in the most polite way consistent with the manners and habits of the centre of civilisation in New Zealand. It may appear wonderful to the mind of the Australian digger, but at this momeut, notwithstanding the great discovery announced in another column, Christchurch is calm. A slightly triumphant twinkle in the shop windows is all that denotes its consciousness of the great event.