FORTUNES IN GOLD

Evening Star, Issue 20998, 12 January 1932, Page 7

FORTUNES IN GOLD

WEST COAST'S RICH HARVEST PROFITS FROM QUARTZ ONE MINER'S 22,000 OUNCES An official history of gold mining in Ncav Zealand discloses particulars of some of the huge fortunes which the more fortunate miners won from the rich fields on the West Coast during the years when millions of pounds’ worth of gold was being exported from the province annually (says the Christchurch ‘Press’). They are there in black and white, hut people on the West Coast have never forgotten the stories of the Avealth that Avas literally scraped from the black soil, and Avhen their employment went Avith the tide of depression that has SAvept the world they started once again to search after the gold which gave their fathers and grandfathers bread. Even in the first years of the great rush of 1864-70 there were astounding returns of gold to individual miners, the imports of Avhich sent eA - ery adventurous spirit in the colony rushing in all haste to try his luck on the new field.

The very first man to do any prospecting on a large scale, so far as the available records s!ioav ; was richly rewarded Avhen one realises that he had only the most; primitive methods of winning the gold. In three months spent scrambling round the beaches and in the foothills of the Coast, early in 1864, this man, Albert Hunt, collected 20oz of gold merely by panning surface dirt as he Avandered about the country on survey work. He then pegged out a claim well in from the sea coast, three miles up the Greenstone Creek above its junction with the Little Hohonu River (about tAventy miles south-east of Greymouth), and while prospecting was earning easily £2 a day. He and some Maoris had, hoAvever, to live on potatoes and fern roots for a time, Avith a little help occasionally from the Government food depot on the Grey. A Government official visited Hunt, and seeing him wash up as much as 4|oz of gold in a day took 16oz of coarse gold with him as a sample, and proceeded overland to Christchurch to report the discovery of a new field. Then started the rush, and before tho end of the year 200 men AA T ero on Hunt’s field at Hohonu, and it is recorded that Hunt, becoming involved in a fight with some of these men, thought it Arise to leave the field. £5 A DAY.

A report dated September 12, 1864, stated that the majority of the diggers were averaging up to £5 a day from their claims. Seven hundred men were then on the field, and in October the steamer Nelson sailed from the Coast for Nelson with 500 oz _of gold and £I,OOO in notes and specie. Up to December 31 of that year, the first year of the rush, about 2,5000 z of gold had been shipped to Nelson. Four men, working in a small creek two miles south of Greymouth, secured 1,2000 z, worth nearly £4,000, in four months. They won another 600 oz from their claim and then left for England to spend their small fortune, 3,000 OUNCES A WEEK.

In March of 1865 3,0000 z of gold were being exported a week from the Grey and Hokitika fields, and in the seven weeks ending with April 30 of that year gold worth £130,000 had been found on the West Coast. There were then fewer than 1,000 men on the diggings. There had been a new rush to the Grey district, in an area at Maori Creek, between Hokitika and Greymouth and close to the hills, where, it was reported, many of the claims were returning the minors a pound weight of gold each a day. Representatives of banks who visited these new fields invariably left taking away up to l,ooooz of gold, and one banker reported to the Government having bought from a Maori working at Blackball Creek a nugget weighing over 220 z. Three men won 500 oz from Maori Gully, near Greymouth, in ten weeks, and in the same locality claims worked in the most primitive way were returning their owners an average of £l2 a week clear of expenses. On a small terrace at Maori Gully a strip of wash dirt Bft in depth was found to be so rich that its owners were averaging a pound weight of gold as each man’s share for the day. Customs returns set out that from the beginning of the rush to July, 1865, nearly £300,000 worth of gold had been discovered. News of these rich finds had spread all over the colony and as far as Australia. with a result that during the next few months thousands of diggers flocked to the fields, the population increasing in a short time to 15,900. There were tremendous drawbacks to the formation of any settlement, but the rich rewards made it worth while. Claims about nine miles north of Hokitika were at the time returning the prospectors as much as £IOO per week per man, and with improvement in the mechanical appliances for working the gold-bearing country the returns increased until a small party on the Kanieri field who had' brought in sluice boxes to their claim were getting an average of 50oz a week. One paddock measuring 12ft by 15ft returned lOOoz. RICH BLACK SAND. Then came news from the Grey towards the end of December, 1865, that rich black sand had been struck on the beach terraces south of Greymouth, where men working the deep layers were getting from £3O to £IOO per week a man. From the Three-mile, south of Grey, the original prospectors were said to have lodged half a hundredweight of gold with the .smelters. This ground was later again worked, and yielded £lO a week to each man. Soon the Grey area became famous for its nuggets. "From Moonlight Gully, where, incidentally, West Coast unemployed are being helped to prospect by the Government, one nugget secured weighed 790 z, and another 78oz. From one claim two nuggets, weighing 440 z and 470 z respectively, were taken. The first nugget was about the size and shape of a man’s fist. There was an amusing sequel to satements published in a West Coast paper at this time, which led to a rush to the Grey of unprecedented dimensions. The rush at first did not justify expectations, and the editor of the paper, after being villified at a meeting of miners, was asked to pay £IOO to a hospital as public restitution. After events justified the state ments, and by May, 1866, one thousand men were on tho field which had at first proved a “ duffer.” The gold here was nuggety and easily worked, with a result that parties obtained as much as oOOoz worth for three months’ work. Men working in South Westland on bind where a dredge now scoops up the gold sometimes at the rate of an ounce an hour, made £1,700 each in three months. In this year, 1860, the value of gold exported from the Coast was £2,140,940, an increase of over one million pounds on the previous sear’s figure

IMPROVED FACILITIES. It must be realised that these returns were hard-earned, with often the most primitive methods, and when facilities for working claims improved, when ground and hydraulic sluicing and the bucket-dredge systems were introduced, the yields went correspondingly higher, although working costs naturally increased. Quartz mining was found to return huge profits, particularly in the Reefton area, where three mines up to the end of 1904 had crushed 1,083,575 tons of quartz which returned gold valued at £2,382,208. Of this amount £694,356 was paid out to shareholders in dividends, while the calls amounted to £482,340. For the purposes of proving that statements that the field was ruining investors because of the number of bad claims taken up, a table was prepared in 1887 of quartz mines which had up to that time carried on operations in the Reefton district. This showed that the actual cash paid in calls into mining companies was £163,015 5s Id, while the dividends paid to shareholders amounted to £210,306 8s 2d. To take the industry as a whole it gave a handsome profit, and continued to do so for years. The Keep It Dark was one of the many min6s which justified its ambitiously fantastic 'name, and up to 1905 had given the best return of any mine in the district for the capital expended on it. Up to the end of that year the actual paid-up capital was £6,208. The value of the gold won was £380,430, and £145,667 of this was paid as dividends, which worked out at an average of £7 5s 8d a share. This mine also gave employment to thirty me a. In twenty-four years quartz mines in Reefton had paid £734.200 in dividends; calls amounted to £486,200. THE ROSS FLAT. The Ross Flat, prominent in the present mining revival on the West Coast, returned fortunes which must make it one of the richest fields in the world. In two year's, one man, with the classical name of Cassius, mined over 22,000 ounces of gold. A surplus of water in the shafts stopped operations of other miners who expected to make just as rich discoveries, and although the flat has never been properly drained and worked, Ross people are confident that with the necessary capital they could once again turn this flat into an Eldorado. CAPITAL NEEDED. The fields which returned these rich finds of gold to miners on the Coast are those to which the country is again looking in the newly-awakened interest in gold mining. In the majority of cases the gold won was but the scrapings of deposits on the surface. When a claim failed to return a high living wage to its owners it was deserted, and it rs asserted that with the present high price of gold and improved facilities these fields could easily be made to return handsome profits. But the day of big finds for rndividual miners is gone, Deposits must be worked on a bigger scale; shaft mines must go deeper; dredges of improved design must work the flats and river-bed to a greater depth; black sand must he treated by the ton instead of by the barrowfull. Capital is needed and is gradually being found, but above all West Coast people are crying for assistance from the Government, not only for prospectors—the rich fields are already there and known —but for advances with which to work their smaller claims, and the prospecting associations which have been formed all over the province are waiting patiently for some more tangible sign of assistance from the Government than the recent decision to assist prospectors under the Unemployment Board’s scheme.