ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 250, 8 October 1862, Page 5

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

MINING REGULATIONS. (To the Editor of the Daily Times.)

Sir,—Whilst endeavoring to form an estimate of the causes whicli led to the reflux of population from Otago at the beginning of last winter, I have been induced to look upon victoria as exercising a collateral influence in producing the anomaly, and to the extreme smallness of claims as being a direct agent in the matter; for, of late years, Victoria has not only failed to yield the magnificent prizes, of which she was so profuse during- the palmy days of her gold fields, but even to give the miners average wages calculated at the current rates paid for ordiuary or unskilled labor. She possesses other material advantages, which render her no rival to be despised by Otago in a competition for a mining population. With, in the one case, a climate unsurpassed for its excellence, abundance of tin,ber for firewood or • mining purposes, and cheap food ; as compared with exce*dvely high pri-es for provisions, scarcity of wood for fuel or mining, and a climate that has nothing to gain by a comparison with tbat of Victoria: it behoves Otago to be no laggard, although she, too, in turn, possesses material advantages which are calculated to attract a mining population, aud of which Victoria is comparatively destitute' Amongst other things, I allude to an abundant supply of water for mining purpose*, and to the extent and description ofground, that with tbe aid of this element migbt be made to afford remunerative employment to large numbers for years to come. But it would argue an imperfect knowledge of tbe actual state of things, to suppoe that however much these advantag s (coupled with the prestige of Gabriel's, Wetherston's' and Waitahuna, and < latterly the Dunstan and No komai diggings) are ia'.cuiated to attract miners, that they will have an equal effect retaining them. Accustomed for tk« most part to work in small parties heretofore, new comers may be told that portions of such a river's bed will pay for working, or such another flat contains gold ; but they will see for themselves, that to work tbe river or procure gold from the'flat will necatsitate association on a scale diftevent from any they had supposed, and an outlay in labour and for appliances of which they had formed but a vague, if indeed any estimate. Take for example a score or a hundred such parties of three or four, and grant, which may be safely done, that they have obtained a payable prospect from the river or ' fished i up' knee deep in water from a paddock in the flat, what they conceived to be so, how are they to proceed ? The flat cannot be worked profitably with the usual appliance of pumps, or, indeed, to advantage at all, except by cutting a tail race, the length of which will depend upon the fall there may be in the river at such part of the flat as may have been prospected; and in the former case, although " wing dams" may do to fossick about the edges°of the river, it will require an expenditure of labour and capital to cut a race and bye wash, and erect an embankment to turn and work it systematically. Miners are not mnch in the habit of calculating contingencies to a nicety; but where months of labour and a considerable amount of hard cash are required to be expended upon a claim, it would be absurd to suppose tbey do not fry things by some such tests as would be applied to an ordinary commercial speculation, although, from the nature of things, the returns must of necessity be more problematical iv the one case than the other. Turning to the regulations, these parties will find they are entitled to hold 40 feet by 40 feet on the flat, or 50 feet of the river's bed by the width between the banks : and fresh from Victoria, notwithstanding the low average yield psr man there, they may be pardoned if they institute a comparison between the two places in no wise favourable to Otago, or strictly to Otagc's government. And their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs is evinced in rather a peculiar manner, for instead oc taking tbe trouble to agitate fir larger claims, their grumblings point to a different issue, and they leave, not because sold could not be obtained in payable quantities, but because the frain»rs of the regulations failed to discriminate sufficiently between that whereon much labour must be expended, and tbat wherein lays little or no risk. It remains to be seen if, with a knowledge of tbe baneful effects ofthe present rules in checking mining enterprise, fch» Governme.it are capable of realising the nature and extent of the benefit it is in their power to confer on the Province, by the initiation of a wise and 1 beral mining policy, instead ofthe suicidal course they are pursuing. It would afford but a slight fonndation whereon to base a claim for simple justice, much less for liberality, to point out that twelve months after the discovery of payable gold fields in Otago, claims are more than a third of the size they are in Victoria at the end of nearly as many years; for there is no analogy existing between the cases, if there be it is remote or partial, rather than immediate and direct. But even if the government has not fallen into the error of apportioning areas on a scale ridiculously disproportionate to these of Victoria, the objection remains that the rules are ill adapted to circumstances, and every fresh development of mining here tends to show their defectiveness in this particular still more clearly. Neither is it any argument in support of the present regulations, to point to the works that have been entered into under them, for tbe question is how much more would have been effected if they had been of a more liberal character. Of course tins can be only surmised, but I think it is fair to infer that the fiats bordering the Tuapeka. Waitahuna, and Waipori rivers and° the rivers themselves, all of which have been proved to contain e,old, would have been thoroughly tried under a system of claims such as would give reasonable security for the labor and expense required to test them. As the difficulties incidental to some classes of mining in Victoria became greater, an increase in the size of claims became a necessity; Avhilst in Otago the necessity existed from the beginning, at least in the descriptions of mining I have referred to : and if proof of this were required ifc might be found in the circumstance that for tbe entire length of the river Waipori, th re are I believe only two companies engaged in turning it. In view of this and other facts I might mention in connection with the subject, one is tempted to ask how long will tbe Provincial Government of Otago continue to placa unnecessary obstacles in the way of the development of her gold fields by leaving unaltered a system of claims which neither interest nor equity can justify] 1 am, Sir, &c, kc, Milo. Waipori, September 30fch, 1862.