POVERTY BAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1156, 24 January 1874, Page 21

POVERTY BAY.

(from our own correspondent.)

January 6th.

When last I wrote a bazaar and concert in aid of the funds for erecting a Presbyterian Church was being held, and the result proved highly satisfactory, the total amount realized being over A'2oo— a very creditable sum for such a small community, and amply proving that there is not much "poverty" about the Bay now, whatever there might have been when Captain Cook landed here and called the southern headland of the bay Young Nick's Head, after the name of the lookout lad stationed at the mast-head who first discovered it.

Another event of importance to the district is the advent of a second newspaper—the Poveny Bay Herald— which made its first appearance yesterday ; a copy of which you will doubtless receive amongst your "exchanges." It is to be issued twice a week, and, judging from the first number, will not only prove a strong opponent to its contemporary, the Standard, but a great boon to the inhabitants of the district. The oil springs were visited during Christmas week by most of the Directors of the Poverty Bay Petroleum and Kerosene Company, Limited, and from the samples of oil brought back by them, and the description I have received, there can be little doubt of the ultimate success of the enterprise. The boring and pumping gear for the Company are now in Gisborne, and a contract has been entered into for the supply of the necessary timber in the course of six weeks. An efficient manager has also been engaged in America, and is now on his way here, so that there is a prospect of our being able to compete with that country in the supply of kerosene in the Australasian and New Zealand Colonies. As a description of the springs may be interesting to your readers, I send the following extract from the Poverty Bay Herald: — "In the centre of this valley is the bed of a creek, dry at this time of the year, and in or near the bed are the rest of the oil springs. There are about half-a-dozen of them in all, probably more. We came upon one or two, indeed, in our explorations, which none of our party had seen before. All lie in a line running about due north and south, and all present a similar appearance, being patches of barren ground with water holes in the centre, covered with red oily scum, and having bubbles continually rising to the Burface. About a hundred yards, however, from the saddle at the summit of the valley is one where the oil is to be found in much greater abundance than in any of the others, and which merits a separate notice. At it, as at the others, there are two or three of the holes covered with red scum. Under an overhanging bank, however, and thus shaded from the sun, was to be seen a hole completely filled with a dark green liquid, which was continually welling up from the interior of the earth. This dark green liquid, we found, was the oil itself ; and in this spring one cannot help asking — have we not what is in the truest sense of the word a ' flowing well ?' True, it did not spout out in a column ' a foot in diameter,' still i it did in a steady and continuous stream.

The spring from which the oil was taken lay, as I remarked when we first came to it, under the shade of an overhanging bank. Shortly afterwards the sunlight reached it, and the effect was ■'•hen a very singular one. The colour of the oil, which was lying motionless in the pool, became transformed to a rusty red, while the bubbles that welled up through it were of an extremely pale green. Similarly, it is worth while to observe, that though the oil as gathered in the bottle was green, and indeed remains so, when held up between +he eye and the sun it is a red light, not a green light, that shines through it."