John Francis Downey

“ No more work seems to have been done on the reef than on the antimony lode, and the prospects could not have been very encouraging, for nothing in the way of active mining was done on the field till 1894, when the Curtis brothers took a tribute over Langdon’s Extended Claim, known by this time as the Julian Claim. While excavating for a tram-line they proposed laying down, to carry stone from the Julian Claim to a small one-head battery they had erected, they discovered a boulder of quartz showing good gold. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the area within which the Langdon’s reefs occur, lying as it does along the powerful Roa fault, has been subjected to considerable disturbance, and in view of this it is questionable if any further prospecting there is justifiable. There is a possibility that careful prospecting by trenching along the lines of the Antimony lode and the Victory lode might reveal valuable surface shoots, but anything found would almost inevitably be badly broken up by earth-movements. ”

“ All the lodes of quartz found are in gold compared with the richer of the loose blocks of the quartz-covered surface of Kirwan’s Hill, and some would seek to refer the latter to a distant source, and consider that the lodes and the field of loose quartz on the surface are only in accidental juxtaposition. ”

“ For some considerable time, however, the company seriously considered the idea of putting in a low-level tunnel at a depth of 400 ft. to 500 ft. below the old workings. There is a strip of reef-bearing country traceable in the vicinity for well over a mile, and the idea of driving an adit for upwards of 2,000 ft. along this at depth in the hope of proving further pay-shoots appealed to the directors. The work would certainly have been a very plucky prospecting effort, but, in view of the fact that the reef-line had been cut by numerous crosscuts for a distance of about 1,500 ft. ”

“ It is as certain as anything can be that all the shoots located in the Blackwater Mine will eventually make into the North Blackwater ground, hence gold-bearing stone may possibly be got for many hundreds of feet in the latter below the present bottom of the shaft, but the depth to which it will pay to work under modern conditions is another question. There seems no good reason, however, for thinking otherwise than that stone of fair grade should live down for at least another 1,000 ft. ”

“ The Westland Province, although it has produced a wealth of gold from its alluvial deposits, has, like Marlborough Province, not as yet had the good fortune to find any quartz-mining field of importance. The only locality within the province from which gold has been won from quartz is the neighbourhood of Ross, where, at Cedar Creek and Donnelly's Creek, reefs were opened up and worked for a time. There are other localities, however, such as the Taipo River, the Wilberforce, Mount Rangitoto, and Cook's River, where auriferous reefs have been noted and more or less prospected. ”

“ The finding of auriferous quartz at the Owen River in 1886 by Messrs. Bryne and Bulmer led for a time to high hopes that a valuable mining-field had been located in the county, but such hopes were very short-lived. The discovery was made from seven to ten miles up the Owen River from its junction with the Buller River. A number of claims, such as the Enterprise, Wakatu, Zealandia, Golden Crown, Bulmer Creek, Comstock, Better Times, and Great Eastern, were pegged out, a township was laid out, and quite a large settlement sprang into being. ”

“ If the pitch of the shoot had been to the south, which is improbable, the general pitch of all others in the area being northerly, it is possible that this adit was driven far enough to meet it, but if the pitch was to the north the distance driven was not sufficient to effect its purpose. Again, if the worked part of the shoot was normally faulted, the same doubt suggests itself as in the case of the crosscut from the low level, as to whether the working was sufficiently to the eastward to find the downward continuation of the stone. ”

“ Seeing that gold was visible so freely in the stone, and that samples of the ore sent to the Cassel Company were found payable for working, this poor return from the company’s own treatment plant surprised and perplexed all parties concerned. The stone was treated in a number of parcels, and with regard to the first put through the battery H. A. Gordon remarks [2] that no one who had prospected the quartz taken out would have anticipated this small yield. The general opinion seemed to have been that in some way a goodly portion of the gold was being lost. ”

“ Despite the fact that a previous company took over £70,000 worth of gold out of the mine, and put besides a good deal of fresh capital into working it, only to find itself unable to meet expenses and compelled to end up in liquidation, a new company has, the writer understands, been floated to give the property another trial. The promise of success for the new venture cannot be said to be bright. There is a certain amount of stone left above the fault between Nos. 4 and 5 levels, on which prospecting is now in progress, but this stone is small, irregular, and in very limited quantity. ”

“ Amongst the scores of mines that were opened up, it is safe to say there has scarcely been one that, sooner or later, has not entered into a zone of serious earth-movement. In some cases, after the shoots had been dislocated by these movements, their downward continuations have been picked up again, as in the Wealth of Nations and Big River Mines—in the former it was only after about sixteen years of groping—but in most instances they were never located. ”

“ In some of the old mines now closed down, such as the Globe-Progress, Golden Fleece, Cumberland, Caledonian, and perhaps the Inkerman West, there is some reason for thinking that quartz bodies of fair grade still await discovery, but the tracing of these would in all cases be a costly business under present-day conditions. Apart from the possibility of finding these ore-bodies, the only hope of a more prosperous future for quartz-mining in the county depends on the discovery, by surface prospecting, of new reefs ”

“ A. H. V. Morgan, Director of the Waihi School of Mines, visited the locality and advised that another adit should be driven on this reef 100 ft. higher than the one first driven, and that the two adits should be connected by rising or winzing. The second adit referred to was subsequently driven for 130 ft., the ore met with in the first 50 ft. being similar in character to that of the lower level, but at that distance from the portal the drive passed into disturbed country and the reef was lost. The assay results of eleven samples taken at regular intervals from 195 ft. to 250 ft. ”

“ In 1882 the Big River Gold-mining Company was formed to work the discovery, but for some time, owing to the inaccessibility of the locality, no very active development was carried out. By 1886 a road sufficiently graded to enable machinery to be carted out was completed, and in the following year a ten-stamp battery was erected. By the time this plant was ready to start crushing, about 200 tons of stone were at grass, which was estimated to be worth fully 2 oz. gold per ton, but when it was crushed the ore did not come up to expectations. ”

“ It has long been believed that in the extreme south of Westland Province—that is, in the region between the Waiho River and the southern boundary of the province—good reefing-country exists. Reefs have undoubtedly been located there, some of them auriferous, but such little information as is at hand concerning them does not seem to indicate that search there holds out much promise of success in revealing deposits of economic importance. ”

“ Hill, there are numerous reefs that strike south-south-east and dip east-north-east at high angles, and thus should pass but a little to the eastward of the field of loose quartz on the northern slope of Kirwan’s Hill. It must, however, be noted that in the north and north-north-west higher part of the hill no notable discovery of quartz has been made (none was reported to me) , and westward, along the road leading to the upper part of Boatman’s Creek and Capleston, in the side cuttings of the road rarely is a piece of quartz to be seen. ”

“ In view of the specimen gold got in such quantity in Moonlight Creek and its upper tributaties, it would appear that somewhere in the area drained by the creek rich gold-bearing reef must once have existed, and probably still exists and will some day reward the efforts of the prospector; but the country is rugged, heavily timbered, and very difficult to get about in, and few men are now willing to face the extreme hardship the investigation of such places entails. ”

“ The stone from the winze was estimated by the owners to be worth 10 dwt. gold per ton. From the foot of the winze a crosscut was made in the reef for 22 ft. without finding the other wall. In 1891, the battery of the William Tell Company at Ross was purchased and re-erected by the side of Blackball Creek, a short distance below where the reef was found, and crushing was commenced and continued from time to time up till 1894, during which period 2,460 tons of quartz were crushed from the mine for a yield of 771 oz. ”

“ Practically all the country in which reefs are likely to occur has been gone over by the prospector, but it must be remembered that all the reef-bearing areas of the district are heavily timbered and deeply covered with mosses and forest rubbish, and in country such as this reefs may easily have been missed. ”

“ Large reefs were shown to exist and to live down to some depth, but they were of too low grade to pay for working. On what was termed the main reef an adit was driven at a depth of 240 ft. below the outcrop, which intersected stone at 532 ft. This stone when driven on proved to be from 9 ft. to 11 ft. wide. It is said that gold could be seen in it at times, but on the whole it did not carry payable values. Some small crushings, totalling 14 tons, were put through the battery in 1903–4 for a yield of a trifle over 10 dwt. ”

“ Quantities of richly auriferous quartz were found scattered on the hillside forming the surface. The first discovery was made on it in 1872, and prospecting was carried on for many years. A number of reef-tracks were located in the workings, in which boulders and small bunches of good stone were frequently found, but no extent of solid reef was ever located. In 1881 it was thought a strong reef had been picked up and a battery was erected, but when development was pushed on the reef soon cut out, and after struggling along for some few more years the claim was eventually abandoned in 1893. ”

“ The stone is too narrow and the rock-walls too hard to admit of profitable working, and there is small likelihood of the reef widening at depth, it being a feature of the bedded veins of the Inangahua district that they rarely alter much in width as they are followed down. ”

“ After the company took the property over a battery was erected, and an expensive water-race partially constructed, and in various ways some £11,764 was actually spent in New Zealand in connection with the operations, but beyond putting in the low level for a short distance practically no mining was done, and not a single ounce of gold appears to have been won. It is not difficult to realize how greatly a flotation of this kind must have injured New Zealand mining interests in the Old World ”

“ The mines of the West Wanganui Inlet field may be said to have all been confined to a stretch of country about a mile in length by a few chains in width, all the principal workings being along the same line of lode which traversed them on a strike nearly due north and south. The lode occurred as a series of lenses in rocks consisting of interbedded argillites, greywackes, and quartzites, the argillites being highly graphitic, and appeared to be confined to a narrow band of carbonaceous, sometimes siliceous, argillite never exceeding 20 in. ”

“ On the slopes of Conical Hill, some 6 chains or so to the westward of the main line, another erratic was found from which a small quantity of quartz averaging 3 oz. gold per ton was taken.
Although there are indications, as before mentioned, that the ore-shoots in the Golden Blocks Mine live down below No. 3 level, it seems apparent that, as far as the main line of lode is concerned, its possibilities of further profitable working are negligible, but farther to the south there is still a chance that close search might reveal ore-bodies that would pay to work. ”

“ The Owen River reefs were segregated veins following the bedding of a belt of greywacke, but the country was extremely badly broken and the reefs had no continuity in any direction. In practically all cases the outcrops prospected by the various companies proved to be moved by faulting from their original positions. Only in the Enterprise Mine did the stone live down to the lowest workings opened, and these were less than 200 ft. below the outcrop. ”

“ No solid stone was met with, and work was then suspended. The company asked for the assistance of a pound-for-pound subsidy to enable the crosscut to be advanced a further 500 ft., but in view of the nature of the development elsewhere in the mine, and the fact that no reef is known to outcrop to the east, the application was not entertained. In 1912 the company ceased operations, but during its working-period it crushed 380 tons of quartz, for an even smaller average return than the Phoenix Syndicate had secured, the yield only being 241 oz. 2 dwt. gold, valued at £883 13s. ”

“ As far as the writer can see, the only hope of prospectors doing any good now in this part of the district is by close investigation of the country higher up than any of the old workings, as there is just a chance of finding there in situ the reefs from which the stone so far worked has been derived. It may be said, however, that prospecting of this kind would be most arduous, for the country is extremely steep and difficult of access. ”