THE CROYDON GOLDFIELD.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 142, 16 June 1888, Page 5

THE CROYDON GOLDFIELD.

ITS PRESENT AND FUTURE

(By A. J. Yogas.)

special Letter to the "Star."

Right away from the low mangrovefringed, fever-haunted sea coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria a low-lying, sandy of almost useless country extends one hundred and fifty miles, in an easterly direction—an impassable morass for months at a time during the wet season, and an almost grassless and waterless desert the rest of the year. One wonders, with an exceeding great wonder, how anyone could have the hardihood to live, and much more take up country upon this most miserable of Queensland's wilds. But people did ; and, what is still more strange, they were happier, from what I could gather during two months' sojourn at Croydon goldiield, before they knew the value of those long ridges of dazzling stone, which they perceived only to avoid when mustering or riding across the run.

THE SITE OF AN ANCIENT SEA.

But to return to the description of the country. The Croydon reefs lie in the gentle, undulating bosoms of low, rocky hills, the first that one meets with on travelling from the coast, a distance of some hundred and twenty miles. A sea, apparently a shallow one, from evidences to be spoken of anon, once rolled across these dusty miles of plain, and has written its mark with long smooth lines upon the great dividing range to the east, another two hundred miles or more along the road to the other coast. Sink where you will, and you rind the same top stratification. For some twenty feet' down you pass through a strange conglomerate of burnt, ferruginous particles of clay, bound together by silica, and perforated by what are apparently the countless burrows of some species of seaworm, which long ages since has passed into the dim, mysterious ewigkeit.

This old sea-bed—ib ran be nothing else, for you can see old beacnes, salt pans, sandspibs, &c, as you travel over it—has apparently been formed by the action of the waves upon hills such as the Croydon and Gregory Eanges. Of the former 1 will now say a lew words. These are more or less mere upheavals, that have been almost levelled again with the plain by that great natural socialist, the sea. Evidently of volcanic origin, but formed of an unamiable nondescript kind of rock, those elevations are worthy of examination. Near Croydon township some of the higher of thorn, about 200 feet above the plain perhaps, are flat-topped, and have small cliffs round their summits. Walk over to one and climb over the lcd-hot rocks, where the doormat-like spinifax grass hides the loathsome death - adder and the lively "gohanner," or the green snake, flashes up the stunted Euphotbia trees. On reaching the summit, you can almost imagine the surf is still rippling over those broiling stones at your feet. There is the last wave-mark ; there is the homely, necessary pipi. How your thoughts flash back to happy feed 3by the Hauraki Gulf in the cool delicious country of the Maori. Star-fish, sea-weed, cockle-shells, and mussels, or rather their ghostly semblance, in hard, brown silica lie round you on all sides. Do you wish to see what lies below ? Then step down here into the adit tunnel of the " Connough Ranger" mine. Six feet of fossiliferous red sandstone, and then the grains of silica become separated by more and more of what is apparently volcanic dust, such as fell at Krakatoa and Tarawera. This gradually gives place to a volcanic conglomerate composed chiefly of rounded masses of felsite, burnt clay, silicious rock, and flint. In this, as in the upper sandstone layer, volcanic bombs of tufa-like rock appear at intervals. Taking the evidence before us, we may safely say that the now solid sandstone once formed part of a sea-beach, which had formed over a wildly volcanic district, and that a fall of volcanic ash and bombs killed the poor inhabitants of the water (they all belong apparently to shallow-water species) whose remains we have noticed, and that the land rose above its old level. Next come the long ages during which the sea eats away again at the hills, and then the land rises again. And we find the old sea bottom to-day with trees here and there even on the hills, where birds have dropped their undigested seeds ; and the poor grass struggles to live and cover the naked, ugly rocks, during the few months in the year ifc has an opportunity of growing in. Man has come too soon upon these plains—some five thousand years or so too soon.

DISCOVERY OF THE GOLDFIELD

The rough outline of the history of the discovery or the reefs may interest you. In 1885 a Mr W. C. Brown managed a station (Croydon) on the plain, a few miles westward of the Croydon ranges, near to the lonely Normanton and Georgetown road. Normanton is the gulf seaport for Croydon. Brown knew nothing of quartz, and used to anathematise the long ridges of the same that almost blazed their "•olden glories in his eyes, because he must needs ride round them in crossing the run. One day, however, he had to go to Cloncurry, two hundred miles south. " A little learning, etc." Brown learnt that quartz often contained gold. He remembered that he had countless tons of what was prized at Cloncurry at his very door. He trembled all over : perhaps a second Charters Towers lay in his back garden. Making the fastest time on record to the telegraph office, he wired to two brothers working on the run at a wire-fence contract, named Aldridge, to search for auriferous quartz. They had already searched, having finished their contract, _ and had found —gold. A little learning is truly a dangerous thing. Brown gave up his comfortable (for the Gulf) station house, and wfint in for mining, with disastrous consequtsaces to himself. RICH AVERAGES,

But what) about the value of the field Digest the following facts and figures, and I will then proceed upon the line you are probably most interested in : —Victoria is a well-known mining colony ; let us take her as a base-line by which we can arrive at a. true estimation of the value of the Croydon field. The total area of the Victorian goldfields was last year 316 square miles. The Croydon field, as proclaimed, has as many as 4,700 square miles within its boundaries. Of these about 500 have been proved to contain auriferous reefs. The real field is about twenty-five miles Ion", north and south, and twenty-two miles wide. The Victorian average yield of 2-oid per ton of stone crushed is as follow s: —Last year, lOdwts l"2Bgrs; in 1886: 9dwts 10-31grs; average for 10 years, 9dwts lOers. Now look at the Croydon returns : At the end of last year, the amount of cold extracted at the various mills upon the Held was as follows : — Croydon Quartz Crushing Company's machine, 4,587 tons for 13,8080z3 ; average, 3ozs 19grs. Hale's, 78 tons for 1640zs 13dwts ; average, 2ozs 2ors Duffy's, 84 tons for 1370zs 7dwts ; average. lozl2dwts2grs. Spent's, 1,356 tons for 2,4430z5; average, loz 17dwts 12grs. Byce's, 1,313 tons for 6,1410z5; average, 4ozs sgrs. Bibby's, 3,381 tons for 6,7970-/.s sdwts; average, 2ozs Odwts 4grs. There was also certain stone crushed at Georgetown and elsewhere, the grand total being for 1887 : 10,904 tons of stone crushed for 31,3970zs 15dwts ; with an average of yield of 2ozs 17dwts lOgrs. Last quarter's return (to March) is 21,7010z5. ' Croydon has, as will be seen by these ficmres, developed faster than any other of Queensland's many goldfields. There is also no doubt but that the disastrous Kimberlsy rush kept the field back, without counting the loss occasioned to it by the

nwmbers of miners who might have come to Croydon that became ruined, or who even lost their lives at the other desert diggings. Space is drawing to a close, however, so I must condense what I have to say further. Croydon is NOT A POOR MAN'S DIGGINGS. Croydon will be a big field; it has as great a, future before it as any part of the colonies. But what must and will be done is the working of tli6 enormous reefs by large, cheap-working, machine-using companies, which, like those celebrated ones of America and Victoria, knock out large dividends from eight or nine pennyweight stone. Take the Croydon Queen reef, with an average width of say two feet, and a length of at any rate two miles; or the Homeward Bound, to bo traced six miles, or the Iguana and True Blue line, extending for over two miles ; and twenty more like these. Some of these reefs are six, and even twelve feet through. There are few, even with the rude batteries at work here, the muddy water and the absence of berdan pans, or concentrating tables, but can turn out an ounce to the ton. Crushing costs from 22s 6d to 25s (it was, till lately, 30s), and carting over three miles, 10s per ton. The gold, also, is worth in many of the reefs only a matter of 38s or £2 per ounce. The noted Queen-lino gold is an instance of this. Water, as I write (May), or rather the want of it, is making the near future of the field a gloomy one. Dig down in your allotment for twenty feet, or surreptitiously lower your bucket into your neighbour's well, and you will get what Queenslanders will tell you, and believe themselves, to be good water. Sing Hi ! for tho Wai Maori of New Zealand's fern tree-shaded gullies ! Yes, there is plenty of drinking water, but the torrents that should have fallen during the months precribed to the wet season never cams Were it not heartrending (to the shareholders) it would seem almost "a lit subject for mi-i-rth," that dry, dusty lookin?, silent battery in front of us. It is known as " The Last Chance," and the man who put it on that hill, having lived many years in the district, should have known what water might have been expected to drive it. In three or four months' time if no rain comes no batteries will be at work ; exemption must then be granted by the warden (Mr Towner), and a great exodus will take place.

BLACK RUIN HOVERS ROUND nearly all the storekeepers in the township. The reason is chiefly that there are only 6,500 people on the field, instead of 15,000, as expected, and because of the decreased freight charged by the carriers, namely, £10 instead of £25, and even £40 per ton. The former miscalculation caused the storekeepers to overstock themselves, and they consequently cannot meet their bills, and the Litter alteration in affairs enables outsiders and new-comers to undersell the older hands, who brought their goods up in the wet season. Even now there are at least 1,000 unemployed on the field, which ought to support a mining population of half-a-million, at any rate. UNHEALTHINESS OF THE FIELD. Is it so unhealthy at Croydon as some atate it is ? Well, I think it is as unhealthy s country as one could wish for if you were married to a strong-minded woman or a lady doctor. I asked one man, who has been in Croydon two years, the question I can imagine you are asking me. " This climate, sir," answered he, with a ghastly grin, that puckered up his sun-dried face till you couldn't help thinking of the poor little monkey next door that you saw die of eating uncooked tin tacks—" This climate is a delightful one." He went on to explain as welt as he could —he is one of six at this hotel down with fever, and is rather weak just now—that the only (only, indeed) bad months are those from March to July. These fever months come after the rains. The months of October, November, and December, however, are those that add largely to the annual rfeath-roll of the place with fatal cases of serous apoplexy. I went out and checked this latter statement of the long, thin, listless patient in the cane chair, and found that nearly 70 per cent, of the annual deaths of this place and Normantou take place in those three months. •

If, gentle reader, you intend to try your luck in these parts, take the following advice :—lnsure your life first; secondly, become a total abstainer, save for a hot nobbier before turning in for the night—this cools you wonderfully, and mosquitoes won't perch on your nose till you have had time to go to sleep; and lastly, don't " cool down" in the delicious evening. Out of a dozen cases 1 could mention, nearly all, I firmly believe, began with a suicidical attempt to enjoy the dangerous evening zephyrs on an hotel verandah, with an open shirt-front. Finally, to capitalists I say—" There are valuable chances at Croydon;" and to miners and others I say—" Wait for a year. There is plenty of room in a goldfield extending as far as Auckland is from Tauranga, and as many miles wide as the former is from Mercer on the Waikato."

As to persons thinking of coming over as carters, or to sell horses, or produce of New Zealand; to all save those who can send over maize and oats to Normanton, I say leave the place alone. During six months' continuous journeying through Queensland I have never tasted good butter or cheese. Why should not New Zealand tinners try what can be done in this line ? To sum up, then, I will prophesy that, despite a shocking climate, a present scarcity of water, a dearth of mining' enterprise in the field, the coming bankruptcy of tho majority of the storekeepers, the poorness of the gold, and the smallness (comparatively) of the returns per ton—despite all this, I believe these giant reefs, so easily worked, will be, sooner or later, taken up by great syndicates and companies, who, with cheap winding and crushing, and improved machinery and dams, will make Croydon the greatest gold and silverfield Australia — perhaps the world — has yet seen. All the same, I agree with a friend who has been on the field for twelve months, that " £2,000 a-year -would not suffice to tempt me to live at Croydon,"

Wo beg to acknowledge, on behalf of the sad case of destitution referred to in our columns last night, in Mr J. A. Campbell's letter :—A Friend, £1 Is ; two other Friends, £1 10s ; a Friend, £1 ; a Friend, 5s and blanket; a Friend, 5s and coat; a Friend, 10s; F.T.P., 5s ; W.J.D., 2s Gd ; J.E.J., 2s 6d ;a Friend, 2s; A.M., ss; John Abbott, £1 ; 5.8.C., Is ; H.M., 2s 6d ; S.C.W., 2s 6d ; a Friend, a blanket; Arch Hill, 2s 6d ; H., 2s ; J.G.C., 2a 6d.

Through a printer's error in last night's issue Mr T. J. Henshaw's name is attached to an advertisement re Onehunga Skating Rink. Mr Henshaw, who is our advertising agent, is in no way connected with the rink.

Avoid damp feet and colds by wearing the new Patent Holdfast Galoshes, to be obtained only at J! 1. Stephens's boot shop, Queen-street. Price, 3s 6d.—(Advt.)