LAKE WAKATIP.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 323, 7 May 1875, Page 3

LAKE WAKATIP.

(From our own correspondent.)

'Tis so long since I was able to send you any of my " stuff" that I should, I think, rank as an "occasional;" but, feeling that excuses are no improvement, I proceed to say at once that the Lakes district is getting along quite as well as could be expected, considering the inauspicious start which it made with the date of 1875, and considering that we are locked up from all communication with the outer world, except what is won for us by the indomitable pluck of King Cobb and Co., whose skill still gives hope to the hardy sons of toil that they will not be entirely cut off from all the rest of creation, even though our roads are quagmires and our hopes of their improvement gammon. Fresh proofs of the resources of the district—being practically unlimited—are coming to hand every day, but few are sufficiently mad to go into quartz mining or heavy speculations until roads are made. I saw a sample of stone from the reef at Macetown, which was taken from a ton which had arrived in the Arrow by pack team, en route for Cromwell. I heard competent judges say it would go seven or eight ounces to the ton. Is it not a pity such a country should be shut up for want of roads, when the roads will pay better interest on money than any speculation I know of. There are plenty of men in this Province who would make a good dray road up the Shotover River to the Sand Hills, or up the Arrow to.. Macetown, if they were allowed to put up a gate and charge a moderate fee for a limited number of years. It is strange that a Government that trumpets forth to the world their readiness to encourage prospecting should not see what has been drummed into their ears for many years by the miners and their representatives—namely, that no bonus or reward can go so. far. or be so safe an encouragement to miners to develop: the resources of the country as,roads. ;They are the legitimate work of a Provincial Government, and that they have not been made is proof; of the gross abuse of the trust which has been delegated to Provincial authorities under the Act of 1866. If the £IOO bonus lately offered for prospecting was intended otherwise than as a sop the ingenuity which devised it would soon have found means to open by roads t such valuable resources as lie locked up in the systems of the Shotover and Arrow. If any of your readers would like to know why no fresh finds are reported from here, I let them know that miners cannot hope to make profits in ordinary ground as long as timber is three pennyweights a set —- that is the cost of it here, and must be so until some better means of transit than pack horses become possible. Some strange rumors come to hand from Q.ueenstown which speak of one gentleman horsewhipping another because of some misunderstanding, or perhaps it may be because the understanding has not missed. I regret the case so much that I abstain from further account or exposure.

We are having a nice open autumn, and are therefore favored beyond our expectations.