QUARTZ-MINING AT LAKE WAKATIPU.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XIV, Issue 695, 6 March 1883, Page 3

QUARTZ-MINING AT LAKE WAKATIPU.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPOSDKST.) March 3. Probably your readers are sick of quartz news. A brief sketch of the prospects of this division may, however, be of some interest. It looks very much like as though our quartz-reefers are gaining experience, and honestly testing the mineral riches of the country. It is almost impossible to give credit to rumors that special trial crushings are made. That tale might have done at one time. Wages are at a too small rate for working shareholders to deceive either themselves or the public; neither can pickingof "selected parcels " of stone be practised with impunity now-a-days. The reports from the reefs under these circumstances may thus be freely acepted, as a rule.

Theaverage of the Phoenixmine at Skippera may be put clown at 15dwts per ton, but its enormous advantage of water, tunnels and machinery enable such a reef to be worked with advantage, crushing both good and poor stone together. The Mount A urn m (late Nugget and Cornish) is also a payable claim to the lessees, but particulars are not freely obtainable. This mine also possesses powerful advantages both as to water and machinery. It would not pay as a company with offices, manager, directors, secretary, etc., and yet a united body of working men can leaso the ground and make it pay. It is the old history of mining companies. Look at home and you will find the same illustration in the matter of the Star of the East claim on the Carrick. You hit the nail upon the head in your editorial remarks about that blunder. But how many blunders occur and are not discovered ? How many promising developements are relegated to the limbo of failures ? It is an important question to ask, nnd justifies your advocacy of local Schools of Mines, or at least professional lectures. The latter, though the most valuable, should, in your correspondent's opinion, be affiliated with practical geology. Hall's claim at the Sandhills has, in my opinion, led to an interesting discovery. It is an old lino of reef, well known. Hitherto it has been worked on two levels, terraces, and i;o end of money spout. Tho Nugget and Cornish and Hercules companies are cases in point. The N. and 0. (Mt. Aurum) pays best on the top levels, though somewhat perhaps out of the lino—that is if the number of leases recently applied for on the southern bank of the Shotover are to be accepted as an indication of tho proper line. Probably it is, for teit trials have shown both alluvial aud

quartz gold obtainable on the comparative surface.

That at Olenorohy, or rather under the mountain chain commanded by Mount Earnslaw, there are quartz reefs, hardly admits of doubt. " Time immemorial"—locally defined—they have of and on attracted attention, but then no adequate trial has been given them. The Invincible company have uow attacked a mountain of auriferous quartz. They are obtaining excellent prospects, and not in this case, fortunately, from picked stone. They have some mouths of crushing before they can get at the stone taken from it.