South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, MAY 27, 1889.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5017, 27 May 1889, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, MAY 27, 1889.

So an attempt is to be made at last. After years and years of talk of the piles of gold that would be got if the Molyneux river were diverted, and its bed laid bare to pick and shovel andt in dish and cradle ; after the publication of Sir Julius Vogel's wild dream of a diversion of the whole river, and his wilder dream of the results of such engineering ; an attempt is to be made to dry a portion of the bed of one of the great branches of the river—the Kawarau. This stream drains Lake Wakatipu, and in its course to Cromwell, where it joins the Clutha draining Lakes Wanaka and Hawea, the Kawarau receives a number of streams which flows through “ golden gullies ” and its waters are constantly “ thick as pea soup” through the operations of sluicing parties on its banks and the banks of its tributaries. Whatever may the total amount of gold hidden beneath the whole of the Molyneux, a more than average proportion of it must lie beneath the Kawarau. The other day a simple telegram stated ; “ Warden Hickson was granted protection to a company to construct a tunnel to divert the Kawarau at Victoria bridge, at an estimated cost of £40,000. The Kawarau, in some portions of its course, winds about very much and this project appears to be one to tunnel through one of the ranges or spurs around which the river flows ; entice the waters to take the shorter course, and so leave dry the length of its bed between the ends of the tunnel. We are not informed what length of the river's bed is to be laid

dry, if the scheme is successful; but it ought not to take many chains of it tj repay the outlay iu tunuelliug and picking up the golden contents of the bed.