THE AUCKLAND GOLDFIELDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume VII, Issue 1841, 8 December 1869, Page 4

THE AUCKLAND GOLDFIELDS.

(Prom Hie Wellington 7W, Dee. 1.) Tun jubilant tone assumed by Auckland whe her goldfields were in the bright flush of properi ty—when money was eagerly poured Lnt her coH'ere iu exchange for mining scrip, am tlic idea was prevalent that the Thames was vast treasure house of gold, with only a thi, coating of surface intervening between it ant the lucky possessors of claims—has modifiet considerably of late. The newspapers ave n< longer filled with glowing accounts of fresl finds and fabulous prices realised for shares : 011 the contrary the very latest intelU gcnce from the Thames 'i= to the eflecl that matters are much depressed, anc t hat a crisis is impending. The cause o this change is not very difficult to discover The development of quartz reefs requires th< outlay of a very large amount of capital, and as, at the time when the Thames reefs became an established fact, the capital necessary for their successful working was not to b< found in the Province, to procure it else where became the grand desideratum, this purpose companies were iloated possessing claims iu the rich ground, which were willinn to part with a portiou of their embryo riches to find funds for the development of the rest—a perfectly legitimate transaction ; bul the first attempts ill this direction were sc successful, that it encouraged a spirit of spe> culatiou in shares, ami "the formation oi companies got up only for sale ; the object foi which the money was raised was lost sight of, and expectations were traded upon enthusiastically, while the claims on which tlios< expectations were based were lying utterly unproductive. Bye and bye the public began tc find out that the money which they had so lavishly disbursed, entirely diverted'from its original destination, had found its way into the pockets of a few sharebrokers—no new source of wealth had been crcated —a feverish excitement induced instead of an abiding prosperity ; and, consequently, they drew their purse strings, and refused to be further gulled. The sharebrokers and others who reaped the harvest of the excitement, finding the game up, have abandoned the field to a great extent, and " gone in" for flax and oilier things, while the owners of claims, finding that the only way to make them pay now is to produce gold from them, have given over speculation, and gone to work. The absence of the capital which might have been employed on the Thames, and the distrust which will (by a iiatural re-aetion), attach to the mines for some time, may retard their full development for a period," but there is no doubt that the gold exists, and that a permanent source of wealth lias been acquired by the Province. Meanwhile the rush to Auckland is greatly overdone ; Australian

capitalists, who have had abundant opportunities of watching similar atlairs through all their phases, fight shy, even while in want of investments ; men without capital who "o the:e on speculation, could scarcely go to°a worse place, as the name of the unemployed is now Legion. Auckland is not going to jump, as she anticipated, into a sudden position of boundless prosperity ; slie will yet have to go back to the beginning, and establish her gold mining industry on a fair and legitimate basis.