A SAD PICTURE OF AUCKLAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 818, 16 January 1868, Page 2

A SAD PICTURE OF AUCKLAND

The Timaru Herald recently published an .extract from a letter received by a gentleman in that town from a friend in Auckland, which gives the following deplorable picture of the Northern capital and province : —“ Ido not know exactly what move to make. My income from Canterbu y is vanishing in large lumps at a time, and there is no investment with a certain interest now in this place to be made You can buy anything you like for an old song ; but 1 hesitate about exchanging investments on the Canterbury Plains, even so unsatisfactory as they now are, for what may turn out a mere speculation on the increase of the value of land without any annual return. The great lesson that has been taught by this crisis is, that property in New Zealand has not necessarily a money value —land is particularly valueless —in bad times it won’t fetch anything at all. I saw at an auction a forty-acre block of good average land sold within the last month at eighteen-pence per acre. I have bought a block of 3(JO acres, in the pick of the country, said to be the finest land in the Northern Island, for five shillings per acre. I have been offered 5,000 acres, "fronting on Tauranga harbour, for two shillings and threepence per acre. The new ‘ Auckland Waste Land Act ’ authorises the actual giving away of land to anyone who will cultivate it.. And this is not in out-of-the-way places, and odd bits, but in the pick of the country, and within easy distance of the markets, such as they are. -I must allow, 1 never expected to see in New Zealand such a complete prostration as now exists in and around Auckland. People here have become careless of consequences, heartless, and all more or less ruined ; large failures take place every "week ; creditors look on with a melancholy smile of satisfaction, and consent to anything, under the conviction that they soon must follow.”