Golden Sands.

There is quite a revival of gold-digging activity down on the Westland coast, co-incidently with new interest in prospecting on other auriferous areas, especially the Co-romandel Peninsula. Many of the fossickers are said to be doing quite well, especially since the price for gold has gone up to some £6 an ounce at the banks. The old-time digging takes a more scientific form these days on the olden Golden Coast. Okarito's big dredge puts through great quantities of the heavy beach sand, where thousands of men once toiled with their primitive beachcombing appliances.

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The riverbeds and alluvial flats where once gold was got in tons, over a length of some two hundred miles along the Westland littoral, are being gone over again, often with profit. We could do with any amount of this, heaven knows. Here and there a nice little bag of gold dust; it comes in most timely these precarious days. Good luck to the prospectors north and south—may they all strike new bonanzas!