COROMANDEL ACTIVITY

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 August 1930, Page 4

COROMANDEL ACTIVITY

PEGGING OUT A REEK.

Old timers who remember the days when the main street of Coromandel was so packed with miners in the evenings that it was difficult to move through the throng, and who delved and searched along that vast Tokatea reef, have always maintained that “the range” was a vast storehouse of mineral wealth (says the New Zealand “Herald”). Down through the years their fajth has been unshaken, and their invariable reply to the seffoer is: “More there than, ever came out, brother; surface only been scratched; she’s there.” Any day of the week sit dovn where that gigantic reef thrusts up through the hill on the Kennedy Bay Road, and presently will come a figure bearing the familiar sugar sack slung from the shoulder, the ration bag, and he will have keen eyes and a kindly face. By these signs you will know him for the prospector. He may be full of vigour or old and bent, but that wonderful faith will look out of his ey<?s. And those who understand, will honour him. Faith plays so great a part in all human endeavour. . Faith has led men on and on, in unbelievable endurance and infinite patience, and the old Coromandel field has many romances. But time moves on and method changes, science takes the place of the old rough and ready ways, and now, the world over, a. new type of prospector is looking for just some of those things that the “old timer” passed by. So it is at Coromandel. And the new men have faith.

r fhat tremendous outcrop near the skyline is the great mother lode of Tokatea, one of the most remarkable ore bodies known in New Zealand, and there are scarcely two men who have ever agreed on the infinite variety of puzzles it offers mankind. The bewildering array of knife-edged ridges that fall away to all points of the compass have been traversed by all sorts and coditions of men, but anyone who knows anything at all will agree that no man living can say he knows onethousandth part of what is underneath. . Mother Nature guards her secrets well. Patient search, of late, has traced the course of what is believed to be the western branch of the Tokatea. A slide took place, in ages past, and made a break, but the reef has been picked up on both sides, and now men are busy with pick and drill and gelignite at several points, and claims have been pegged out all along, from below what is believed to be the junction to over two miles south. This ore body has been traced, running true to direction, from up behind the Coromandel Hospital to Petote Creek and beyond.

But it is not gold these men are primarily looking for, although gold is present. They are testing and exploring a vast mineralised reef for lead, copper, silver, and other metals, and specimens are being examined by experts and classified lots are being packed for a'ssay. This is sulphide ore, shining in crystals, beautiful to the eye and still more beautiful under the prospector’s microscope. It is a vast ore body, lying along the faces of the slopes with a slant westward. No one can say yet what its dimensions are, but it is 14ft thick at one point of investigation and 125 ft at another. Wherever examined it is heavily mineralised. To determine values assays have to be made by the score, but here is one returned by the Thames School of Mines:—Per ton: Gold, 14dwt; silver, 2oz; lead, 16 per cent; zinc., 14 per cent.; copper, 0.7 per cent. Value of silver and gold per ton of ore, £3. THE POSITION TO-DAY. Another, on samples from another section of the reef, made at the Hauraki mine house, is:—Gold, 3dwts 18grs; silver, 7oz 17dwts llgrs; copper, 4 per cent.; lead, 18 per cent. In the old days your true prospector,

poking in on a leader, struck sulphide ore and went home. There was nothing doing. However richly mineralised, that stone was as useless to him as the surplus 1 mutton was to the farmer before refrigeration came to aid. But just as the cyanide process made many famous mines possible,

other and newer processes, have sent men searching eagerly for what was found and lost and neglected when the old-timer looked only for gold. To-day there is a simmer of excite-

ment in Coromandel. It would not be correct to say there has been a new reef discovered. What has happened is that a great branch reef has been traced that was hitherto not suspected of carrying either the gold and silver, or the lead and copper content, that it shows on investigation, in fact no one previously realised the existence, right alongside the township, of such a huge ore body. High-powered motor cars conveying city men who poke into gullies and along ridges cannot arrive and depart from a place like Coromandel without attracting notice, and all sorts of rumours are quickly in the air, but time will be required before al! details can be set out and examined.

As one of the city men interested said: —“We are looking into this from every angle of view. We want to know everything that is to be known, and that, is why we have put men on at different points to open up the reef and let us average it on samples. The heavy mineralisation is surprising us, the gold and silver content, so far as the preliminary investigation has gone, is beyond what we had hoped. It is the lead and other base metals and tho sulphuric acid content we are after, and if sufficient of the royal metal came in to pay for the working we would be more content. We cannot yet tell the public very much. We are busy learning for ourselves, and there is a great deal to learn. We hope, in fact, we believe, that we have something a very great deal better (han we anticipated when we pegged our claims, and we are receiving more encouragement daily, but we are determined that there shall be none of that sort of hurried rushing to float com-

panies on a. little prospecting and the launching of elaborate and costly schemes that, have ruined many a good mineral field. As business men wo want to know costs, our engineer has to prove everything he says, we shall study and prove the various problems till we know the thing from A. to Z, and if it results in a great new

field of endeavour, in the employment of many men, in prosperity to Coromandel, everyone will be pleased. But wo uro not in this to find something sensational. We might strike a rich patch, but we have put that out of our minds. If it comes it will he welcomed, of course, but wfiut we are

studying is the prospect of putting out a great body of mineral at a, reasonable and modest profit per ton of ore, and we want none of that speculative element that has done so much to kill legitimate mineral industry.”