NEW ZEALAND
GOVERNMENT GAZETTE
(PROVINCE OF NELSON).

Published by Authority.

All Public Notifications which appear in this Gazette, with any Official Signature hereunto annexed, are to be considered as Official Communications made to those Persons to whom they may relate, and are to be obeyed accordingly.

By His Honor's command,
J. C. RICHMOND, Provincial Secretary.

VOL. XII. NELSON, THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1864. No. 13.

PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1864.

THE Twelfth Session of the Provincial Council was opened this day, at Two o'clock, upon which his Honor the Superintendent delivered the following Speech :—

MR. SPEAKER AND GENTLEMEN OF THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL—

1. In reviewing the past twelve months, and endeavoring to anticipate the coming portion of the current year so far as may be necessary to make estimates and devise plans, there appears to me, more than ever, occasion to notice around us, and particularly within our own Province, the fluctuations of trade and population that attend gold seeking.

At the opening of your last ordinary Session, I built no calculations on the hopes created by the influx of diggers during the autumn preceding, and there was no chance therefore of our being involved in difficulties by the partial way in which those hopes have been fulfilled. Business, during part of the past year, has been to some extent depressed, and a large portion of the trading public shared in the depression. New discoveries have changed the tone of things, and, taking the year throughout, we have reason to call it one of fair prosperity.

2. The development of our gold-fields during the past year, has not indeed equalled the common expectation, but the movement of diggers towards the south-western districts, and the efforts made by the Government to keep pace with it, have not been fruitless. The Valley of the Buller is no longer a land known only to a few explorers. It is open to all, and many are now able to judge from their own observation of its capabilities and resources.

On former occasions I have brought under your notice the names of those who have conferred benefit on the public as explorers in various parts of the province, and I now refer with pleasure to our chief surveyor, Mr. Brunner, our first explorer of the western and south-western parts of the Province, whose topographical notes (made many years ago under difficulties which it requires an effort of mind to appreciate, now that they are removed), bear wonderfully well the test of closer examination which, since the opening of the country, can easily be applied to them. Eighteen years ago he gave a year and half of his time to exploring this part of the Province, living almost entirely on the indigenous productions of the country. It is only now that tracks have been made through the parts he travelled, that his labour and preservering energy can be fully understood and appreciated. A portion of his journal was published by order of the House of Commons, in the year 1850, and his services were, I believe, acknowledged in the presentation to him of a medal, by the Royal Geographical Society of England, and it will be a great pleasure to me to unite with you in giving him some tangible evidence that his fellow settlers appreciate the services he has rendered them.

3. Side by side with the industry of the gold-fields and its sudden movements, the less rapid, but sure process of reclaiming the wilderness for cultivation,