2gS TlMEHRI. 
regarded with a similar sense of humiliation at its short- 
sightedness and fatuity. If money is to be spent let it be 
laid out upon some comprehensive project which will be 
of permanent value in the future instead of a time- 
serving scheme which can only promote limited local 
interests which may cease to exist before the means of 
furthering them can be carried into effect. If no more 
goldfields remain to be discovered, then no railways are 
needed, but if the whole country be more or less payably 
auriferous, and no one acquainted with the gold forma- 
tion of the colony can doubt that this is so, then the 
sooner this fact is established the better, as we shall then 
possess reliable data upon which to base calculations. 
The colony and its natural advantages must be made 
known as widely as possible, and when this is fol- 
lowed by a great influx of capital, the gold industry will 
make a prodigious stride, and the paramount necessity 
of opening up the country being clearly demonstrated 
the means of effecting it may be safely and unhesitatingly 
determined. 
Although the signs of the times seemingly point to gold 
as the harbinger of better days, I am far from attributing 
paramount importance to it as being the only likely 
source of prosperity in the future: I am disposed to 
regard it rather as a means to an end. There are 
hundreds of young men now in the colony — and they 
would be followed by thousands from elsewhere as soon 
as their example became known — who, could they only 
realise a little capital by gold-digging, would gladly 
settle down and engage in some permanent occupation 
of an agricultural or industrial character, thus forming at 
once comfortable homes for themselves, and the be- 
