KIMBERLEY GOLDIFIELD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7657, 7 June 1886, Page 6

KIMBERLEY GOLDIFIELD.

DEPARTURE OF THE ORPHEUS. Yesterbat afternoon the schooner Orpheus got under weigh and proceeded to sea, being bound on her long voyage to Derby, " the nearest point to the Kimberley Goldfield. It having become known that the schooner was to sail in the afternoon, a large crowd assembled on the Queen-street Wharf, and the movements of the vessel were watched with interest. Those on the schooner received hearty expression# of " bon voyage and "good luck" from the assembled crowd as the vessel dropped off from the wharf. The vessel takes a general assorted cargo, the principal lines being timber—houses in frame —,potatoes, spirits, flour, biscuits, _ ctc. She takes eight passenger*, who have all signed the ship's artioles as shilling a month men, to enable th«m to obtain passage by the schooner, as she could not provide sufficient space as required by the Passenger Act, although she she could do so for an extra crew. All the men who have gone with the Orpheus, except one, intend to proceed right on to the new El Dorado. The exception is a man who, having taken with him a waterman* boat, intends to ply as a waterman at Derby, and believes he will find for himself and his craft plenty of work. It is expected the ■chooner will take about a month to reach her destination, and in the matter of provisions, water, Ac., she is said to be amply provided. The next vessel to follow the Orpheus, it is expected, will be the Notero, leaving here about the 20th inst. She will make the third vessel that has been sent to Kimberley from this port. The first was the Griffin, which loaded timber at Whanearoa and the second the Orpheus, to which we have alluded above. The Griffin took no passengers, and her cargo consisted of timber only.

A VESSEL FROM WELLINGTON. [by telegraph.PßESS ASSOCIATION.] Wellington, Sunday. A number of Wellington people are making arrangements to leave for Kimberley, and will probably leave here by the barque Carnarvon Castle on the 14th instant. Some of the country residents who have come in prepared to go to Kimberley express indignation at the Hero being taken off the berth, ■am it was on receiving a telegram from the Wellington agent of the Union Co. that they brought their horses into town, only to find that' the steamer was not going, and they have to provide accommodation for stock. _____ TEE CLIMATE. A ship captain who has been trading in the King's Sound and Cambridge Gulf, has been interviewed by the Lyttelton Times : —" I have," he said, "been three times in King's Sound, and once in Cambridge Gulf, in the months of February and April, in command of the steamer Ganges. The climate is awful, worse than Queensland — it's the worst in Australia. Of course lam speaking of that of the coast. I never was inland, but you can see a considerable distance, many miles, over the country from the ship. Around Cambridge Gulf it was quite barren, nothing growing but a gum tree hero and there. At King's Sound the country is rather hillv ; the hills are not higher than the Port Hills, and they don't form a range. They are detached, round-topped mounds, like big hummocks. The weather is frightfully hot, not a dry heat like Queensland, but moist, and the malaria rising from the swamps is something terrible. I very much doubt the story in the paper tha other day about ice having been found on the buckets at night, though that might be the case on the top of some high hill. At times the weather is nice enough when the sea breezes blow from the nor'-west, but generally the climate is what I have told yon, And then the mosquitoes : the young fellows who are talking of going there from here have no idea what they are like—they'll simply eat them. It will take a white man at least a twelvemonth to get acclimatised. Not good for horses? I should say not. I reckon they'll lose ten out of every 20 horses, for they will have to become acclimatised as well as the men. lam very sorry to see these young fellows going over there from here. They are not the sort to get on there. Australian diggers are the man. They would rush a place if it were next door to h 11 if there was gold in it. They'll go anywhere, and there are enough of them to fill a good-sized goldfield. They are used to hot climates, and know just how to go about things, but inexperienced young fellows from a town would have no chance at all."

REPORT OF A TRAVELLER. Mr. John Pentecost, F.G.S., of the New South Wales Technological Service, lectured at Newcastle this week in connection with the Kimberley goldfield, over which he recently made an exploratory geological trip. He is reported to have said, in the course of his remarks: —"We .... started again, and this time reached Cambridge Gulf. W« found extreme difficulty in landing, as the bed of the river was one mass of soft, ■limy mud, on which it would have been utterly impossible to land without sinking overhead. We travelled from Cambridge Gulf down to the district; known as the present Kimberley goldfield. . . . On arrival off Cambridge Gulf, and when off Cross Island, some of our party proposed to land, and travel further by land. Bnt we could see neither grass nor water, only here and there a tuft of grass, and the rest was for the most part bare dry ground. The gulf is about 60 miles in length. Nearly all the ground round about and in the neighbourhood of the gulf is taken up by individuals and companies, mostly in Sydney. The Duke of Manchester holds some hundreds of thousands of acres in this direction. I proposed to go to the south-east, but many of our party proposed going to the east. However, we continued our course southeast, and at last struck the Ord river. We attempted to strike for Port Darwin, but did not at all know the course of the Ord river, whether or not it ran south towards Cambridge Gulf. We found that when we came to walk through it was extremely difficult, there being no solid footing at all =- nothing but a mass of soft, prey, slimy ground, and we had to place saplings and bushes on the ground before we could possibly pass. We made the black boys useful in this respect. We saw the place where a waterfall had been,, but the sandstones showed the ripples as though the water had been there but yesterday. As we travelled on further we came to a lagoon which was filled with game—turkeys, wild fowls, and small game of every description. The actual region in which gold is situated is about 480 miles from King's Sound, and is something under 200 miles from Derby, lying in a northeasterly direction. The great difficulty to be overcome is the fact that from King's Sound to Derby water is very scarce Indeed, and, as » general rule, almost undrinkable. There are two ways of reaching the goldfields—one by the Cambridge Gulf and the other by the Derby route. But in going by the Derby route, the great scarcity of water iB not the only objection. There is really very little of interest along the Derby route. There are hardly any signs of minerals to be seen in that direction, but by. going right up from the Cambridge Gulf the whole way along is rugged and rocky, and the whole of that district is considered auriferous. It is exactly the sort of country in whioh one would seek for gold, being entirely rocky, and covered with a kind of yellow quartz. We only found one speck of actual gold, but we did not seek it, as our object was to find land suitable for depasturing stock. While on our road we had a sharp brush with the blacks. Forty or fifty aboriginals, armed with spears, were on one side of the river, while three or four of our party were firing off their revolvers on the other. I did not take any part in the matter myself, as I considered that it might well have been avoided. After this we (having lost many of our horses, enly having 11 out of 30) put two boys on a horse—one facing each way—to look out for the blacks."