NO TOWN IN ERUPTION.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXIII, Issue 3612, 23 March 1880, Page 2

NO TOWN IN ERUPTION.

[to the editok.] !Sik, — There was much to do about nothing in No Town on Saturday evening. It would appear that directly abreast cf the township, at the height of about 80 feet, therb ia a longish plateau of ground containing probably 50 to 60 acres, almost clear of timber, and pretty prolific in old stumps and Maori heads. In years gone by this terrace supplied the town folks with their firewood; and until a few ■ months since Messrs Gillori and Devery had a sort of Warden's privilege to run their pack horses and other cattle within the same. Although fenced in by G. and D., no obstruction in any shape or form was ever offered to miners and others who occasionally went into the enclosure for i mining timber and also for firewood. It has, in point of fact, become a kind of commonage. Now, within the last few weeks Mr Parfitt, storekeeper and butcher, has made application in the proper quarter to have the use of 50 acres of this ground for the simple purpurpose of keeping handy for slaughtering any cattle he may purchase at the usual sales. He seeks the acreage on a depasturing license, and intends to fence in the same; but any fool knows, or ought to know, that all this being done, the miner has just the saime rights and privileges over the ground as he ever had, and that at all times he can enter on ! the land, cut timber, sink : shafts, erect dams, ,cut waterraces, and all the rest of it, and Mr Parfitt can, no more interfere than I can. It was amusing, as well as painful, to hear one of the leaders at the meeting talk of the time when the township would be covered up with tailings and other debris from the sluiced uplands, and I urging that the terrace now applied for I should therefore be kept as it is, in order j that the inhabitants might fly to it in the floody days to come. We all know (and one cf the chief speakers at rhe meeting specially knew) that the wholesale sluicing of ground above No Town has hitherto been accompanied by something closely resembling bankruptcy to all concerned ; but perhaps the orator of Saturday night has in view another of his gigantic schemes, by means of which the auriferous mountains oil this watershed, and all that they contain, shall be moved by Jupiter Pluvius and himself acting in concert together. This mighty sluicing business may be expected to begin in that ever coming year, when the snow falls will be blue, and the rain descend in ten-gallon casks. When people having common sense can see no harm in depasturing licenses being granted in terms of the Mines Act and the regulations made by Waste Lands Boards in all parts of the Colony, they can also see that miners do not suffer the slightest injury thereby. The land is as open and free to them and all their requirements as ever it was, and their right to the best timber for mining purposes bnquestioned. It is the objectionable agricultural lease, and the destruction of useful mining timber on a goldfield that the miner requires to wßtch and strenuously oppose ; but some of our No Town miners do not know, or will not see the difference between a pasturape privilege and a Crown grant. I am, &c, Fair Play. No Towc,'22nd March, 1880.