The Manawatu Standard (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1886. DEPRESSION IN THE SOUTH ISLAND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1601, 6 January 1886, Page 2

Manawatu Standard (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1886. DEPRESSION IN THE SOUTH ISLAND.

In the Middle Island the depression evidently is beginning to disappear. At the quarterly meeting of the Christchurch Chamber of Commerce, the Chairman, in his address, sDoke in a hopeful manner of the future. He said that the farmers report the crops generally as promising better than average yield, and with a plentiful supply of grass for their stock, they are in better spirits than for some time past. He had just returned from the West Coast, he said, and as far as he could see, although the haleyon days of gold-digging may be over, the storekeepers and others, as a natural consequence, find trade less brisk than when miners were squandering their easilyearned money, yet gold mining was entering on a new phase which was likely to do both the miners good and the colony more good than it lias done in the old days. A considerable population was earning; fair — in fact, good wages, .and mahy are now quietly saying up their surplus earnings; intending to settle down to some more certain occupation when they have gathered sufficient capital. While on the coast he heard of good reefs having having been recently found and proved at Mokihinui, Westport, Lyell, and Reefton, and there seems an indication of a revival in prospecting and mining throughout the coast. It is, however, on the coal deposit* that the future wealth of Westland depends, and with the harbor works now being carried on at Westport and Greyinouth there should, in a few years, be an immense trade done there in coal. All this is very satisfacrory to learn, and we may in another year expect to speak of the depression as a thin? of the past. ■■ \