PROSPECTING.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 36, 10 August 1895, Page 4

PROSPECTING.

— « — TO'THB EDITOB. Sis, — I quite agree with your correspondent "Bsvonian " on the general question of not granting monopolies on the goldfielda, but he muses the mark in the reference he makes to the applications made by Mr. Ziman for prospecting the oountry atthojieadofthe Maruia and Matakitakx rivers. This is an enormous area of mountains whioh rear their summits about 2000 feet above the timber line. As far as I know not ten men have prospected this area of many hundreds of , square miles for quartz reefs although the creeks arid rivers were profitably- worked 30 years ago. About seven years ago a local resident and the earliest settler in the district spent-three *ew« with me in trying to traco the lode from which a very rich boulder oame. It took us throe days in Februnry to gain the top of a ridge, a. long way from the highest peaks. We found-four reefs, none payable as far as we could^ijdge. We got water

from small lakelets fed by the snow even llion on the ground, find wore finally driven out by a piiotv storm, being fully three days distant from nny habitation. Only ono man, tho well -known prospector Antonio Zala, had tried prospecting in those regions previously, and I do not know that any one has been there tince except Mr. Capleg, and if Mr. Ziman is prepared to put on ten men to prospect each 640 acres, I say, good luck to him. Let me conclude, sir, by saying that it is not by offering opposition to capitalists that tho yold-minintf industry is to bo nesisted. What stands most in the way of encouraging capital to invest in the best and wealthiest natural product New Zealand possesses ia the Seddon Act of 1891, with its astounding 363 clauses, 295 regulations, Echedules without number, and amendments year by year to complicate them. No -wonder capitalists from England and elsewhere are astounded at Acts which virtually say, " Get out, we only want the man with a tin dish and shovel." If Parliament knew anything of what mining is capable of if properly fostered and legislated for, it would at once go back to our old simple mining laws and our two shillings and sixpence export gold duty and then, in spite of Seddon'a legislation, which even the gold fields Wardens cannot interpret, we would find many others beside Mr. Ziman to recognise the untold value of our hidden wealth. The mining industry has had a ban put on it ever since Mr. Seddon took it in hand. His abolition of duty killed it in 1890, his Mining Act of 1891 buried it, and now that it seems to have a resurection look about it a cry is beingraisedastomonopoly. If "Devonian" will travel across the range dividing the Matakitatd from the Maruia, tnethinks he will alter his views. I am, &c, "W.