THE KARAMEA GOLD-FIELD.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 107, 9 May 1867, Page 2

THE KARAMEA GOLD-FIELD.

To TUB EniTOR OF THE ' NELSON EVENtNGMItL,

Sir — I was much gratified by the remarks which appeared in your issues of Tuesday and Wednesday last, with reference to the great importance to Nelson of the Upper Karamea district, and of the the Upper Karamea district, and of the country known to exist behind the Mount Arthur Ranges. You mention in your article of yesterday a Mr. Harvey, as having furnished you with information on the subject. Now, as I happen to have been acquainted with that gentleman for some years past, and know him to be perfectly truthful and trustworthy, I feel confident that any information with which he may have supplied you is thoroughly reliable.

As Mr. Harvey spent the greater part of the two evenings he was in Nelson, en route from the Baton to the Wakamarina, at my house, and kuowiug that he had been over into the upper valley of the Karamea, I took advantage of his presence to question him as the route into that country from the Baton, of which we have lately heard so much, aud of the existence of which Mr. Hough seems so positive. His statement completely bore out the view of the case which you seem to have adopted. I need not repeat to you all he said to me with reference to this subject, for it entirely corresponds with what you have stated iu your article of yesterday, but I may add that when I remarked to him that the surveyors employed by the Government had always denied the existence of such a route, or even the feasibility of makiug oue in that direction, Mr. Harvey inveighed strongly against the absurdity of such an assertion, inasmuch as the track was certainly there, and was the regular aDd only routeever taken by the diggers who have been located in that, neighborhood. He also stated that having traversed over the whole of these ranges, from the head of the Baton, near Mount Arthur, down to Mr. Hough's saddle, he was persuaded that there was no other place where a dray road could be made over into that country ; that, in fact if the Government wished to make such a road, they must take it over that saddle, and nowhere else.

I also questioned Mr. Harvey as to what prospect there was of the country in that direction turning out a good goldfield, and his reply was, decidedly encouraging, that the last river they had prospected was very promising, and had several splendid bars in it, but that it was impossible to set in to work there, as the distance thej had to go for provisions, and the difficulty of carrying them through the bush aud scrub, only left them about two days' supplies, when they got back agaiu. It was therefore fruitless to attempt to set into a claim, and until the Government made a bridle track into that country, so that provisions could be brought over to the mining population located there, the case would hopeless. He was of opinion that had the Government believed the statement made by Mr. Hough, and made a track four years ago, the results to Nelson would have been very different.

I have been induced tb offer these few remarks to you, because it will show your readers that the statements made by Mr. Harvey do not vary in any respect, and it seems to me that they are entitled to the consideration of the Government, as supporting the assertions made by Mr. Hough fo: so many years past. I am, &c, Vigilant. Nelsou, May 9.

A correspondent of the Geelong Advertiser states that the crust upon Lake Boloke, leased by a family named Macdonald bears this yeara coat of salt three to thirteen inches in thickness, which at a low computation would realise three thousand tons of serviceable salt ready for table or salting purposes. They have also a large quantity of boiled salt of perfect purity and fineness.

As the Rev. Sydney Smith was one of the wittiest so was he one of the soundest, as he was one of the wisest so was he one of the best, of men. fiis censure was always generous, his sentences ever just. Prudent, considerate, charitable, and humane, he was the very opposite of those professional wits, who seldom speak except to stab ; of those political reformers who have no toleration for virtue — in adversaries ; of those social ameliorators who are good Samaritans in words, omitting ouly the penny and the oil at the inn and by the wayside ! It will be easy to imagine that by common-place people he was much misunderstood. The buoyancy of his great heart was mistaken for levity, and the odd manner in which he sometimes put things for irreverence. As illustrations I may quote the words which it is said gave offence to a "serious" and venerable lady, one fine summer morning :

— " Open the shutters, and let us glorify tbe room ;" the sudden shock sustained

by a sensitive woman of uncertain age, when the mouth of June made the noonday sultry, — "Let us take off our llesh and sit in our bones ;" the terror of another old lady when he told her he chained up his big Newfoundland dog because he had a pass'on for breakfasting on parish boys. Read iug memories of him, one almost ceases to wonder at the alarm expressed in the features of the simple gentleman who actually heard from Mr. Smith himself that he had an intense desire to "roast a quaker," and may fancy the terror of juvenile delinquents brought before him when he explained, "John, bring me my private gallows ! " His joke has been told iu many ways of the advice he sent to the Bishop of New Zealand, not to object to the cold curate and roasted rector on the sideboard, hoping he would disagree with the man who ate himself. It is not difficult to picture his face of broad humor, lit by an internal laugh, when the man who was compounding a history of Somersetshire families applied to him for information concerning the Smith arms, received this answer, — " I regret, sir, that I cannot contribute to so valuable a work, but the Smiths never had any arms, and invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs." — Art Journal.

A poetical offender at Leeds excited the sympathy of an appreciative Judge. While in the lock-up he wrote a number of verses in which he set forth how the Devil tempted him to commit the robbery, how chance gave him the opportunity, and how conscience at last prevented the completion of his guilty design. After his conviction he handed a poetic appeal to Mr. Justice Lush, who read a portion of it to the jury. The prisouer, after making various appeals for mercy, promised that if they were responded to he would embalm both Judge and jury in immortal verse. The Judge complimeuted him on his talents, and sentenced him to 12 mouths hard labor.

A London letter in the Chicago Tribune maintains that this is the golden age of literary men aV regards the prosperity of their private circumstances, and goes in detail as follows '• — As Charles Dickens himself made known the dispute with his wife, there is no harm in alluding to it, or in concluding from the fact that he allows her £500 a year and that he keeps up both a town and country house on a scale of considerable expense, that his income is not less that £8000 or £4000 a year, probably yet more. His periodical, All

the Tear Round, produces him nearly half that sum, and his "readings" in public are worth £500 a year. Mr. Dickens is sympathetic — always ready with his purse in a good cause, and also with his influence. Mr. Trollope has a good income in a government ofiice, to begin with. He keeps his hunters, and is splendidly mounted at the sport. He usually has a houseful of company, though he works as hard as any man I know. He is in no danger of want, even though the American Congress adheres to its unfair and suicidal course. Kingsley's professorship at Cambridge, though it appears to have taken every drop of manliness out of him, has at least supplied him with a competent income, and added considerably to the means which his church living already supplied. Of friend Tupper, what shall be said ? He is immensely proud of the popularity of his works in America, and invariably recurs to it in talking of the contemptuous treatment he meets with from critics at home, and on a beautiful estate in Surrey thanks his stars that, if the censors are against him, he can thrust a hundred editions in their faces. Alfred Tennyson, had he ro pension, would still be a rich man. The author of Ten Thousand a Year, rejoices in the opulence of a highly-paid judicial office for which he has only party recommendations. Miss Evans has but to lift up her finger, and half the publishers in London would run to bid to a preposterous figure for her literary favors. Of the religious authors, the M'Leods and G-uthries, and Spurgeons, I can only say that theirs is the most prosperous calling of any, equalling even Mr. Boucicault's pay for new dramas, which is a bold statement to make. In a word the poor author, who is, at the same time, deserving, can hardly be said to exist in England at the present time.

We should be sorry to say anything that would unnecessarily disturb the peace of ladies in their compliance with the present remarkable fashion of wearing chignons. This custom may seem very irrational to tbe male half of mankind, but this objection would apply to many of the fashions by which ladies consider that they adorn themselves, and so must not count for much. A more serious objection, and one calculated to have weight with English ladies, has been started, according to a correspondent of our own, by a Russian professor, M. Lindemann. " According to this authority 75 per cent, of the false hair used for chignons and similar purposes in Russia is infested with a parasite to which he has given the name of Gegarine. The gregarinous hair, it is said, is very like othei' hair iu appearance; but on close inspection little dark knots are seen at the free end of the hair, and may even be distinguished by the naked eye. These are gregarines. These parasites have a most ignoble ancestry au^ habitation, being found iu the interior of the pediculus capitis. Ifc is only due to them, however, that these statements should be verified by other observers before we give all the particulars of their natural history. They are not easily destroyed. They resist the effects of drying aud even of boiliug. Acids, alkalis, ether, and other agents, would kill them ; but these would be injurious to the hair, aod so cauuot be used. According to the authority quoted, in the conditions of a ball room the gregarines " revive, grow, and multiply by dividing into many parts — so called germ-globules ; these fly about the ball room in millious, get inhaled, drop on the refreshments — in fact, enter the interior of people by hundreds of ways, and thus reach their specific gregarian development." We do not answer for thr truth of all this natural history ; but when the natural history of chignons themselves is considered, ifc may well be all true. In Russia, the hair of them is supplied by the poorer people, especially

peasant women of the Mordwines and the Burlakes, near the Volga, who do a large trade iu it. When the Barlake goes out to work in the spring, he perhaps puts a clean shirt on, but he decidedly never takes it off until he returns home in autumu. Verily, as the professor argues, here is a fine chance for parasites. We musfc leave the subject with ladies and naturalists. Half the awful possibilities of the fashion — which it does not require a microscopisfc to suggest — would deter men. We cannot so certainly reckon upon affectiug ladies ina matter of fashion. Bufc of all these things, one of the most objectionable is false hair. — The Laficet.

We should be overlooking a fact of great medical aud social interest if we omitted to note the severity of the cold and its effects on life. During the severe frost of the first few days of the year it .was apparent that, despite the tendency in comfortable and healthy people to regard cold at this time as the right thing, the community generally were feeling that there was an enemy to life in the air, or, to speak more accurately, perhaps, the fatal absence of a friend — a certain amount of heat. Even the young and the strong saw the first signs of the frobt yielding with a feeling of thankfulness. Those who have appointments involving the seeing of large numbers of the sick poor doubtless got the most vivid impression of the weak resistance that humanity __ in the condition of poverty can offer to such cold as that of the 3rd and 4th of January. The pale, cold, pinched, stouy look of outpatients of dispensaries and hospitals, and the but little better look of those who are confined to such beds as they have in fireless rooms, made hospital and dispensary duties at once more urgent aud more painful than usual. How terrible the delusion is that weather like this is beneficial. It is dangerous to the brain, and lets paralysed patients in for second attacks. It is still more deadly to the chest, and he is a healthy mau who docs not feel touched by it in some p.ut of the respiratory apparatus. It drives the poor into their overcrowded houses in increased numbers, and so favors fever aud other epidemic disease. And, in a word, apart from its more specific effects, it is geuerally and through the whole body devitalising. It takes the life out of the body and reduces it by so much to the condition of surrounding things. The Registrar-General shows us that we have in frost a cause of death in severity more like plague than anything else. Cold can run a sharp race with cholera. In one week it has raised the number of deaths by 445 in Londou alone. Last week 1891 deaths were registered. In Glasgow the mortality in last week was at the rate of 73 per 100 ! Can nothing more be done to enable medical men who have to see the sick poor in this season to relieve them more efficiently and more directly than by present arrangements is possible ? It would be a most reliable aud efficient charitable investment to form a fund to be used by medical men, who are in the very best position for seeing where a blanket, or a shilling, or a soup ticket is most urgently needed, and conld be most completely utilised. — Lancet.

The Court of Queen's Bench has given a decision which has an important bearing upon the administration of the criminal law. A marine store dealer had been convicted, like hundreds of others during the last twenty years, for having iu his possession stolen goods of which he could give no satisfactory account. Re appealed first to Quarter Sessions, where his conviction was confirmed, and then to the Queen's Bench, where it has been quashed. The Judges unanimously decided tbat the words of the Act, "having in his possession," applied not to the receiver, but to the thief. In giving judgment, however, thier lordships hoped that the law, as they had interpreted ifc, would soou be altered and the former practice of punishing tha receiver resumed.