GRESS OF SOUTHLAND. THE ARGUS AND THE NEW ZEALAND DIGGINGS.

Southland Times, Volume 3, Issue 102, 16 October 1863, Page 3

GRESS OF SOUTHLAND.

THE ARGUS AND THE NEW ZEALAND DIGGINGS.

iUbelnvercargillTimes^fytiOiit;.)-- ;i ' ]ast issue we com;meii;ted ; nierel^^ !pjrt'othi^H(wor*s^peec^^LiftK^ ; Igf^^PrpvihcialGounciljAyiijch, j t o ttie raqueitary c6riditipn>p£;tlier |> we now purpose eri^eringVmoreV Bp'n. the various ir^portant'-nrijat-ry [rein contained ? .subjects which 'tijre the most earnest, careful,; tient consideration. ''His Honor^; lie attention' 'of the i' Coiincil:; , report; of I /Provincial ■ I er , pointing: out that unless i r ious roads :r to digging^ ;in ; !) mediate vicinityof the town £re' I i this .sufnraer, next, winter, | i them in as bad a state as they ; be last; We have' hot before II report alluded to, but we pre-i Ie Provincial Engineer, in recomLg that broken /metal be used , Ltbat\the r roads should first of all • II pitched^ before- su^h metal is I This, of bourse, necessitates a larger expenditure ; and, until the rto the Mokomoko is completed, a stone up the.Waihopai for the "and the Puni Creek for the East ff ill not only be a slow, but a very live process— yet, that something one boated up from the Mokothe north and east roads to .nnngs be well pitched during the I°, as far as it is possible to be ff e can very well afford to wait c completion of the Invercargill [okomoko Railway will enable us ( at something like a cbe'ap rate, n metal to cover what we ijtch now. The adoption of a course combines celerity and Eiess, and we shall be able to viable this summer three times igth of road. On some parts of ad between the Mokomo'jo and belltown, the broken m :tal has thrown o.n the surf oe of the clay, even with the trifling traffic which s hitherto had on it, the metal has i to sink out of sight, — it could itaud a fortnight's heavy usage, [next object mentioned by his ir is the construction of a wooden ay from Invercargill up the valley eOreti, to enable us to secure the i trade during the ensuing winter, in recommending it he has used sound and cogent reasons for its tion. We imagine every member ie Council will entirely concur in dvisabrlity of constructing a railfor a certain distance to the Lake, my comment from us would, be a recapitulation, at perhaps greater lh, of the arguments which His or has condensed in a. few lines, ivill therefore confine ourselves to particular description of railproposed, — that of wood, the engines and carriages Dted by Mr J. R. .Davies. v SJlt&yer says that *' a new truth has I) jciranter three normal stages of op- " tion. In the first, it is denounced i 1 imposture ; in the second — that " hen it is beginning to force itself notice, it is cursorily examined, plausibly explained away ; in the 1, it is decried as useless, and hosto religion." If a new truth has to mnter opposition, so has a new mii ion, more particularly if it simpli--3 and renders easier of accomplisht to the uniniated that whL-h rei ed previously a long professional cation to effect. Mr. Davies' patent 'ot au exception to the rule. When as first proposed in Victoria, the idea wooden railway was ridiculed by all timate engineers ; the thing was simple, and by its adoption, ello's occupation would be gone ; usade against it was consequently imenced ; a railway which would a few hundreds a mile, when the ilong and Ballarat line cost many usands, was. out of the question, voted thoroughly illegitimate. Mr ies, however, made at his own exse, and worked for some time, a rt line at the Green Hills, which, a what we can' gather, answered 1, and refuted' the mal-antici-ions of those who pronounced inst it. It was also proposed at one c to construct a similar railway from laarat to Smythe's ; a committee i appointed to inquire into the feasiity of the project ;' plans &c. were imitted, and met "with favorable isideration. That it was never ried into execution, was owing to i company finding that it had not Bcient funds to construct any line of Iway between the two places. When issrs. Davies determined to bring the gine over to ' Invercargill, to get it 6 the carriage for conveyance down to elbourne, two pieces of scantling 24 etlong.were fixed at an acute angle, up aich the engine steamed into its posi»n, in the presence of several persons ; r was this all, to prove the singular te it had, it was stopped half-way, and en steamed on again ; of this we are formed by an eye witness who is :ivil engineer. From all th'iß it would pear, that although the Governmentof icto:ia would not entertain Mr Davies' oposition, such trial as it hs had in (at colony has' proved successful. Of its leapness and celerity of construction ieTe can be no question, the only one bicb can arise as regards this province i whether in 'a moist climate like ours, ie wooden rails would stand ? If, as c are credibly informed, wooden rails, iade of far softer wood, than blue gum, ringy bark, or black pine, answered ell, and stood for years in England, c do not see why rails- constructed of lOie woods would not answer here ; irwe believe that statistics have proved '.at less rain falls here than in England, nd our. informant without having ver seen Mir Davies' patent, or know»g anything about' it, in explaining he peculiarities of. the line adverted d above, as: being in use in the part of England he came from, stated, what h Davies states also, tha J t the friction f the wheels on the rail deposits a

metallic coating, rendering the wood in facfc'harder than it wa3 at first. It must be remembered also that the rail can be turned four times, and a fresh surface presented to the friction of the 1 wheels ; thus, should one edge of any rail begin to fray, it can be immediately I'musb be done^ is sp parent to all. Australian experience .has proved the futility of- metalling a road without pitching Lit— =•' but '-■■ "such- a thing is never dreamt of there. Indeed, so much so is this the case, that in some cf the best agricultural districts — such as , Hamilton, Cochranei, &c. — where the i funds at the disposal of the Road i Boards are not very great, and the natural roads quite as bad in winter as they, are here, it has been wisely determined that it would be better to pitch wejl as large an extent of road as thiir funds will permit, and wait until they can afford to metal it, than to do thoroughly — i.e. pitch and metal — at once a smaller extent. Thus if they have not as comfortable and smooth a road to travel on as might be desired, they have, at any rate, a long extent of road which will carry heavy traffic. This course we would recommend the attention of the Council. If, with remedied at a very trifling cost : looking at it, however, in the most unfavorable light, and supposing it will last only two years, our object will be effected. The Lake trade will be secured, and then, if it be found necessary an iron rail can be fixed on the wooden ones when we can better afford both the time such a railway would take to construct, and the expense of construction. We have not before us the preliminary report of the Chief Surveyor, mentioned in His Honor's speech ; but we believe it will be found to coincide with us in our opiniou, and from the care, caution, ability, and elaboration of detail which distinguishes all Mr Ileales' report?, we doubt not that it will carry very great weight with the Council, in determining a matter of such grave imp n-tance to the welfare of the Province. In determining on the construction of a railway, the Council will also have the satisfaction of knowing, that they are making v highway, not merely to a gold field, which in the ordiuary course of events will be worked out, but in all probability, as stated in Ilia Honor's speech, to rich copper and tin mines, not to mention the splendid agricultural land it will open up. We must postpone the consideration of other matters ment.oncd in His Honor's speech to a future opportunity.

(From the Inrcrcar/ill Times, Oct. 7.) No newspaper which has ever come under our notice lias brought the art of falsifying the truth in a plausible manner to such a pitch of perfection as the Melbourne Argus. Whenever the object in view cannet be obtained by speaking the trutli, then, without the slightest hesitation, recourse is bad to an elaborate system o^ lies. Years, not. a few,'have passed since the soubriquet of the " Iving Argus" was bestowed on the journal which at one time had by far the largest circulation of any in the Australian Colonies. In the present day the circulation is considerably re duced, but the old vice remains as strongly developed as ever. One of the latest specimens of this propensity is to be found in an aricle on the Gold-fields of New Zealand, or, more properly speaking, of Otago, for no mention whatever is made of Nelson. We must ltt the writer say a few words for himself, in order that it may be clearly seen that we ourselves are strictly adhering to the truth when accusing our contemporary of wilful and "deliberate falsehood: —"At the time when the spirit of restlessness was filling shipload after ship-load with adventurers for the Middle Island —when the charms of the gold-fields of Victoria yielded to the boasted attractions of Otago —we warned the emigrants against the fate of those who allow themselves to be seduced by a will-o'-the-wisp. We had no interest in being alarmists. We did not begrudge them any prospects of good luck they might have detected on the Dunstan or Shotover. Their departure has not influenced the fortune of the district they turned their heel 1 on. No doubt, indeed, it was a pity that our own ground should be deserted, that its richas should be left unexplored, that the bone and muscle of the colony should have been enticed away in the pursuit of a shadow, —for a shadow they must now, if ever, feel it to have been. It xequires an effort, indeed, to recollect a more signal instance of a wild-goose chase than that exodus turns out io be. We could not have a better illustration of the old saying about going farther and faring worse, than that which the various accounts from Otago afford us.'' There is some little truth in the above paragraph. The Argus certainly did warn " the emigrants against Vhe fate Of those who allowed themselves to be seduced by a will-o'-the-wisp,'' but ie went further —it denounced the New Zealand gold-fields as an utter sham and delusion, and, from time to time, published letters purporting to come from unfortunate men who had visited the diggings, and were reduced to the last stage of want and misery. One thing the Argus was unable to do, it could not stop the gold from being brought into Melbourne, it could not very easily falsify the escort returns, nor could it, with any chance of success, greatly exaggerate the number of miners who were engaged on the ground. Everything that could be done was done to prevent an exodus of the mining population from the worn-out goldfields of Bendigo, Castlemaine, Dunolly, and 'all tlire other rich spots, where a hardworking man can barely obtain sufficient by his labor to keep body and soul together. Now that returning spring

promises to renew the emigration from Victoria to this Island, the Argus takes up the subject, and treats, it with more unscrupulous mendacity, then. ever. It is true that its "own correspondent in Otago is guilty fn nearly an equal degree, for he has drawn a picture of misery, and distress such, as his ehi f says, ■'" has not been experienced since the days of the Port Curtis rush." But the information which reaches a newspaper office comes from many sources besides the letters of "own correspondents. 1 ' Of facts of public interest, perhaps no one is so well placed for judging as an Editor, even though the occurrencesmay happen thousands of miles from his sanctum ; and he can in most cases, by a careful comparison of the varied statements which come be/ore him, arrive at an approximation to the truth. The Argus is no worse off in this respect than any other journal, and the letter of its own correspondent, and the article from which we quoted above must have been inserted, not only with the conviction that they were calculated to mislead, but with the knowledge that they contained a large number of pointblank falsehoods. The Melbourne thunderer has exhausted all its arguments, expended all its eloquence, and taxed its powers of lying to the utmost, in order to persuade the miners of Victoria not to quit their present places of abode. They are reminded of the numberless instances in which they have been before deceived, they are asked to believe that they are impetuous, nay, even foolhardy, and entreated, just for this one 3, to be more careful, aud pause before they rush headlong to certain destruction — or, in other words, to the New Zealand Goldfields. The Slipover catastrophe is called into service, and each accident by flood and \ eld which has happened dur'ng the winter, now daawing to a close,°is made to do duty a second time, as a warning to all who may be thinking of taking ship to the land of the Maori. They are told that men, women, aud children are perishing i'nmi cold, expo ure, and want; that, in one inst;ince, there is good re son to l-ulieve that five hundred men have, lost their lives; that in Dunedin fire th-nisnnd of the able-bodied men of the commimitg are starving ; that two clerks are wanied, and the struggle for preference creates a sensation in the town. "The streets arc deserted. The dicing--, arc worse off: cold, floods, avalanches, are drci-m-;tia-j the minors." Such is the story that, the Argus tells with "no wirh to exig^erate, and no object in making i capital of it." Let i;s see if wo c;m i put matters in a rather more cheerful 'lisiht; admitting, as we do, that acci I dents have been of too frequent, occurrence on the gold Melds during the winter, and that general business in Dunedin might have been brisker with advantage to all parties. In the first place, the quantity oi 1 <ro]d exported from Otago during the current yiar t<» September 18th, amounted to •loO.iiOo oz. (exclusive of that, exported from Sonthland direct to Melbourne) : — The cumntity previously exporU-.l i.« n« P>l!ows: HiU ... " - lb7,W~> ISG2 ... ... 3!>7,0i)2 ' 050,107 M-ildnrr n c:i"ukl total since the discovery of (he The e-ooru iuve brought do'.vn the fnllim-ing mmntitiea of S'M duriuff the can-en:, year . —

The Argus will scarcely be able to able to show figures to match with these, particularly when it is borne in mind that in Otago and Southland combined the number of miners falls consisidcrably short of 25,000. But, enough on that point ; we have before us a packet of letters, thirty-eight in number, received at various times duiing the last five months, fro*m persons on the goldfields of O.tago — for the most part on the Southern diggings. These letters were the production of seventeen individuals, only two of whom could be supposed to have the slightest interest in placing things in a more favorable li^ht than they actually were, and a letter from one of those two is, by a curious coincidence, tbo gloomiest of the lot. In turning over a second time these pages, which were never intended to be published, we can discover no such symtoms of wide- spread misery ,'as the Argus says exists. A few of the writers have realised very handsome sums by their winter's operations, and ull, with the exception of three, have cleared their expenses, during the worst season of the year. There is mention made of an accident of a serious nature which happened to a miner — the next sentence tells how, in this land of starvation and misery, thirty pounds were collected for him in the space of three hours. Thero are accounts of floods and snow storms, and, further on, we learn how Biitish pluck and endurance weie found suffici nt to repair the damage done by the first, and to wait patiently till the fury of the second was expended. One lucky wight, who had persuaded his wife to come over from Victoria, to share what the Argus would doubt-

less call his want and misery, speaks of establishing "himself' permanently in a country which seems to him "well adapted for farming, with the certainty of having a good market For one's produce." Throughout these letters, which are a hundredfold more valuable as an index of the prosperity of the New Zealand goldfields than any number of "Own Correspondent's" letters, there is a tone of contentment not to bo mistaken ; but from time to time we have been shown others which fully bear us out in saying that the miners and storekeep3rs generally hold most favorable opinions as to the richness and permanency of the Middle Island gold fields. We could refer to the newspapers of Dunedin, of the diggings, and of Invereargiii, for a confirmation of those opinions, but the objection might be raised tint they are interested in promoting a rush, and cannot therefore be depended on ; we admit the objection, to a certain extent, but contend that the Melbourne press is interested, in even a greater degree, in sounding the praises of the ancient diggings of Victoria. One more quotation and we have finished. T; c Arym says : — "A firm in Creswick, but a few days since, included among the causes of its insolvency the 'scarcity of labor at the current rate.' If this be correct, and the current rate means seven shillings a day, where is the excuse for crime or the plea for emigration.' 1 We can find an answer to the question. Private letters reach the hands for which they are intended with as much certainty as newspapers, and whilst the • Anjus is having King letters inserted in !tscolu-nns for the purpose of leading the minors astray, Tom and Harry, seated by their firesides, may be perusing the last good news from old friends on the Arrow, the Shotover, or the Duustaii ; and pausing to think how soon they will bo able to raise a sufficient sum to tako them to their old comrades. The accidents of the u-inter will not deter them from paying New Zealand a visit in the summer, leaving behind rhom t!;e scorching winds, (he had wat<r<-, and the miserable rtiinuiierution of die Victorian gold mines.

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