THE KUMARA RUSH.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 154, 18 October 1876, Page 2

THE KUMARA RUSH.

The Dunedin Star publishes the following, received from its Own Correspondent, by telegrap ), on Monday : "It is estimated that between six and seven hundred arrived here last week, and nearly the same number left. Unless the lead is traced in a more compact form, when probably it will prove rich, many mora will leave. The present sinking is Bft., and the claims wide. Some get payable wash ; others none. Tae deposits of wash are patchy and uncertain. Claims have been taken up one mile and a-half ahead, as far as Kapitea Creek, on the line of the race, and many are prospecting the surrounding country, from wiiicu fresh discoveries are hoped. If these discoveries are made, there will be a great exodus from here, as hundreds are waiting, and shephering in the meantime. Tue township is building rapidly, the sawmills, of which, there are two, working day and night, while supplies from Hokitika are also coming in. A great number of prospecting claims on the lead will bottom this week. More gold is offering on account of tiie last rain."

The same journal further adds :—We are indebted to Mr. John Morrison, of George-street, for the perusal of a letter received by him from an old Otago miner, who, writing from Kumara, on the Bth, says:—

" If you know anybody who is coming here, stop them, as it is no good their coming without money. The place is right enough, for the gold is here, i.e., there are no great piles to be made, but there are any amount.of holes bottomed oh payable gold, the majority of which will run from four dwts. to half an ounce to the load, with from ten to twenty feet of dirt, which I call good ground. But there is no water to be had till it is brought in by race, and this is a great drawback. Still, if anybody has got from £ls up, to spare, he could not do better than come here ; but it is no good coming unless you mean to ' wire in ' in earnest, as there is no fossicking ground. The work on this field requires time and money ; the ground has all to be close timbered, from forty feet to one hundred feet, in rather stony soil, which it takes three or four weeks, and sometimes more, to bottom, the boulders requiring to be blasted out. »About one hundred people arrive here daily, but not one out of every fifty has any money. They go the first day into the bush where the lead is, and because they cannot see anything on account of the timber, they go back and say the field is no good. About one hundred tunnels are goir g in just now, but none will be on payaole stuff till Christmas, They are six or e'ght of a party, with seventy feet a man. Besides these, there are a hundrad c'aiins bottomed on shallow ground in the flat. These have ten feet of dirt, and are good at that. It is no use running the place down, for it will be a good average d'goirg? for years, with hundreds of claims that will pay good wages and give employment to numbers of wages' men. It is certainly not of much account at pres nt, • because of the want of water. I know a good many who are on geld, but they have a hard struggle. There is very little tick given, and anyone coming here about Christmas might, I believe, buy-in very chap, for there is no huney knoekinr aoout; in fact, I never before saw ac any rush so much ' hard-up * men as there are here. Indeed, we have '"all the ' riffraff' of the country. . The township is a hrga one ; and in four or five months it will, I believe, be the best place in Isew Zealand, with plenty. of. money being spent in it. As I have already saidi it is no new chum's diggings; it wants money, time, and experience j in a is mining propar. here." vj. ..' ■.:..' (

We clip the foUowing from the; Chrut* church Press An old-digger on the West Cptot, : speaking of the Kumara, to far'moire people there than the extent c&; payable ground so far discovered 'warrants. There are a few good claims-near the prospectors', but after that the wash dirt gets poorer until 'it runs out to a color.' Many of the claims only just payable have to be worked by tunnels, some of these being 1,200 to 1,700 feet in length. The ground is fu'ler of big boulders than _he ever saw before on any diggings he has ever been on, and ' they seem to have lost the lead last week,' and a great many diggers were leaving the rush. A large number of business places had been erected and were still going up,. more than he ever before saw on any rush in such a short time.- Business sites were very high, fetching from £ls to £7OO. His opinion was that if many of the busi- ■" ness people had not already burnt their fingers, they were in. a fair way of doing so. People there seemed to be mad about the rush ; his opinion of it being that it lias been in former time the bed of a river, and the present patch of diggings is limited—similar to the patches on the present rivers -or the workings on the banks of them. Other patches may he, and no doubt, he thought, would be found not far from the present one, but h's belief was not to the same extent as the present one, for. this one was in a line with, and about the same distance from the main range as the other goldnelds are which have been worked. He was sorry to see by the papers .that so many people were coming there, and regretted r the accounts that appeared in the various Pro: vincial papers about the richness of the ground, as many who had left comfortable homes and situations with the expectation that a large rich field with a golden claim awaited them, would find themselves sadly disappointed on arrival. The day he wrote he saw one man who had come over from Wellington under such circumstance, misled by the glaring reports which he had. read, and who was then leaving' the rush to look for work, and others he had heard of had been compelled to do the same."