The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1894.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 236, 3 October 1894, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1894.

~,'.'. For.ths cause that lacis assistance, For tha —rone that needs reai-tanoa, Forth* future in the distance, v And the good that we can do.

The mining report just presented to Parliament by the Hon; Mr Cadrnan is an interesting and important document. Like its predecessors, it has been compiled with great care, .and deals exhaustively with mining mattersWe are pleased to find recorded a steady progress in gold and coal raining. Mr Cadman says that the goldmining industry has done more than any other towards the settlement of the colony. Though the number of persons employed in goldmining is very much less than formerly, there are still about 60,000 supported by this industry. Mr Cadman may well say that goldmining is an industry of great importance to New Zealand.

Since the first discovery of gold at Coromandel a total yalue v of nearly fifty millions sterling has been exported. In the South Island alluvial diggings have yielded enormous returns by the simplest machines. But in the North the precious metal has been chiefly found in complex ores. In the brilliant Caledonian period the mines were shallow and the ores being oxidised yielded very handsome returns under the old-fashioned battery.'-and amalgam treatment. Even itheu, probably not much over 50 per cent, was saved, but the gold being abundant, and little or nothing known about refractory ores, miners were satisfied.

But when the oxidized ores were | worked out, " free gold " was less common, and refractory ores made their appearance. Then, much of the gold was-lost, and dividends were few and far between; shareholders got sick of paying calls, large mining areas were abandoned, and goldmining was voted a wearisome and profitless industry. -These conditions continued until some two or three years ago, when ttfe Mac Arthur Forrest cyanide process of gold extraction from refractory ores was introduced. But shareholders had had too much of new gold-saving processes to care much about the latest one, and looked upon it with a not unnatural indifference, Had not the Cassel Company, the patentees of the cyanide process, boldly gone to woik to erect cyanide plants and demonstrate the real advantages of their cyanide process for recovering a very high percentage of gold from refractory ores, there would now hardly have been a dividend-paying mine in the Auckland mining districts.

Now we have, amongst others, the Try Fluke, the Crown, the Golden Cross, the Komata, and the Waihi Goldmining Companies using the cyanide process, and recovering by its means So to 95 per cent, of the assay value of their ores. As a natural result,, all these mines are dividend paying. The most remarkable instance is the Waihi mine, which, since its adoption of the cyanide process, has sold the whole of its heavy stock of quicksilver, greatly increased its yield of bullion percentages, doubled the value of its shares, and has become one of the great mines of the colonies.

The results of the cyanide process in the South African mines are even | more surprising and encouraging. (Being employed on a much larger | scale, naturally the out-turn of gold j mounts up to figures which bid fair to place South Africa in the van of goldproducing countries, unless Western Australia, with its marvellously rich reefs, occupies the premier position. Lord Sudely anticipates that Western Australia will become .the greatest gold-producing country in the world.

In the meantime, the South African mines are yielding gold of enormous value. In the' Witwatersrand district the yields for the last three years have been as follows :— l Mills. Cyanide. Cyanide, j Percentage of v' oz. oz. yield. 1891 694,372 34,862 4-7 1892 1,006,421 178,688 135 1893 1,147,960 350,510 226 Without doubt the introduction of the cyanide process has beenef the greatest advantage- to the South golddeids;

New Zealand comes a very long way behind South Alrica as a gold producer, but in the Auckland' districts the percentage of increased yields from the Mac Arthur Forrest cyanide process are even more remarkable than/in South Africa, the yield for the June quarter of 1894 in the North Island being ot the value of ,£52,920 ; of this £.21*567 was produced by cyanide. Compared with South Africa these percentages are more than double, showing that for a large proportion of our refractory ores the cyanide process is very successful. The fact stated by Mr Cadman that a parcel of tailings had been purchased by the Cassel Company for .£5,000, and that for the first seven months of this year, bullion of the, value of .£9,592 ha(* been extracted from them, is significant

Though the annual yield of gold has greatly fallen off from that of former years, we see no reason to conclude that most of the gold has been extracted from our gold-bearing districts. The gold lies chiefly in mountain ranges covered with dense forests. Such conditions render prospecting a very difficult and costly operation. The Coromandel peninsula, for instance, as yet has hardly been more than scratched. Twenty years of burrowing into the hills comprised within the small area which forms the centre of the Thames goldfieids has failed to exhaust the rich lodes buried there. It is impossible, therefore, to compute the treasures that in all human probability lie hidden in other unexplored parts of the same auriferous range. At Coolgardie, the field was on the wane when the discovery of the Londonderry mine galvanised it into new life. On this subject the Special Commissioner of the "Sydney Daily Telegraph " writes:—

Ab the time of the Londonderry disclosure Coolgardie Had unmistakably entered the path of adversity. . In the continned absence of water the alluvial returns were decreasing ; reefs that promised well on the surface were duffered out; others that never should have been worked, continued only to demonstrate the folly of their workers; prospectors wero becoming disheartened, prospecting syndicates were approaching liquidation and dissolution. The London boom which everybody prayed for, presented no signs of " coming " —the true barometer of the place ther Coolgardio bars were less crowded day and nigbt!; English and colonial mining representatives had left in dieappointmenb, if not' in disgust. Here, there, and everywhere were signa of a departed little boom and a coming big bad time.

Suddenly the Londonderry mine, which the owners were working in secrecy and silence, revealed itself, and a few weeks sufficed to prove its phenomenal richness. Confidence, .they say, begets confidence, and confidence^ some 'people say, means capital. In a greater degree, gold has an affinity for gold. Silvered plates used for catching gold never act so well aB when they are charged with gold. So it is that bhe'finding of one big mine often leads to the finding of another. The Londonderry started the Coolgardie gold revival. ... It imbued disheartened prospectors with renewed hopes ; ib stimulated. .jdryiblow.e.rs. and foßsickei'B ;; it revived dyiifig Bytidic^teB1 and Created new ones ; it stopped* the great* "get back," and started another influx of gold seekers to Coolgardie. The storehouses ;of Nature's treasures wero more actively exploited. The Wealth of Nations was unearthed, and more discoveries have been made in the last two months than in the previous twelve. Above all things, the Londonderry mine has demonstrated'the potentialities of the Coolgardie goldfield. If this—the greatest surface gold find made in Australia, if not in. the whole world—can remain nearly, three years untouched within ton miles of Coolgardie, in a district swarming with men daily fossicking for surface outcrops, what may not extensive prospecting on and beneath the surface of this enormous auriferaua area disclose ?

What is true of Coolgardie has been the common experience of all goldfields. A fortunate discovery, made at a time when all confidence was dying out, has*often infused such an amount of fresh energy into goldmining pursuits as to produce new discoveries. We certainly think, therefore, that the encouragement of prospecting comes within the functions of the Government. Rich reefs there may be in abundance, but until they are looked for they will continue to be of no use to anybody. The deep levels, as yet untried, ought to be tested, for upon these the permanence of our goldmining industry depends. We are losing our population in the wild rush to the Coolgardie goldfields. If one-tenth of the men and money now leaving New Zealand for Coolgardie were to be spread over the Coromandel Peninsula and other similar districts, we have no hesitation in saying that the : results would be of very great advantage to the colony, and we 'think fhe Government ought at once to obtain a substantial vote for prospecting purposes.