AN AUSTRALIAN MONTE CRISTO.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 10258, 29 January 1894, Page 2

AN AUSTRALIAN MONTE CRISTO.

(Pall Mall Budget.)

This queer country of ours is a prodigious lucky-bag, out of which we are always fishing up some surprise. There is scarcely a nomadic digger who has not a hoard of red and blue and green stones which he cannot mate im his mind to sell for the trifle offered by rne jewellers. He means to go home some day, and then h® will get a price for them. Meantime he carries them about in a little gold-dust bag, sometimes getting wheedled out of one or two by a barmaid, or going “ on the tangle” and losing the lot. Occasionally one sees in a breastpin or a ring a fine sapphire, vouched for as native; but the emeralds, rubies, spinels and almandines found are mostly of small size. All the world knows the magnificent opal from our White Cliffs, and all the world will soon have an opportunity to admire the superb turquoise found at Hedi, in Victoria; wa have pearl fisheries; we have the biggest silver mine in the world, and gold reefs so rich that a drive is sometimes described as "a jeweller's shop;” but surely we have hit upon the gnomes’ treasure-house when we talk coolly about “ a ton of diamonds in sight! ” There have been such sensational rumours of late concerning the diamond fields at Bingara, on the Horton, in New South Wales, that we had grown callously incredulous, and are all the more astonished to find from the report of a special commissioner just returned to Sydney that these rumours were lees than the truth. CAPTAIN EOGEES. The diamondiferous tract is some thousands of acres in extent, and the mine, the Monte Cristo, already opened up, belongs to one man. Ho has been working it by himself, determined to prove it before taking the public into his confidence, and that is why we have heard so little of whut was going on there. Before describing the field, some account of his career is due to this Australian Count of Monte Cristo. , Mr (captain by mining courtesy) Rogers is a Cornishman, active and resolute, but now over eighty years of age. After opening up tin mines in Tava, Penang, and elsewhere, he came to Victoria in the first flush of its gold fever, and gained his colonial experience in several rushes. Eia practical shrewdness was early demonstrated. Ho argued that instead of following the alluvial, gold should be traced to its matrix. Acting on this conviction, in 1853 he opened in Wattle Gully, Forest Creek, the first quartz reef in Victoria, being jeered at as a madman for expecting to find gold in a lode. His example was, however, quickly followed; and then came the difficulty of extractng the gold from the cruelly hard quartz. The captain claims to have erected the first quartz-crushing battery in Australia. By-the-bye, homo people cannot imagine what a dazzlingly beautiful thing in the sun is pure white quartz crushed. _ The streets of Ballarat are metalled with it, and make one think of that little surprise the French King prepared for hia mistress when he had the park avenues spread with salt. Captain Rogers acted as mansger to various mining companies, till in 1873 he waa appointed expert to a Sydney syndicate. Ho was sent to report on Bingara as a goldfield. It struck him the country was likely for gems, and ha resolved to return at his leisure and prospect it. It was not for eight years that this “ leisure ” moment came, but he had not forgotten. Ho came all the way from Ballarat, in the adjoining colony, and after two months’ prospecting, found a lead which averaged three carats to the load. Although at this time there was uncertainty as to the market value of Australian diamonds (so-called), some speculators at once offered him £BSOO for his claim. It was probably this want of definite knowledge about the stone found here that induced Rogers to accept the offer—a proceeding he soon regretted, as the purchasers made a ring end took up every acre of diamondiferous country in the district. Here, again, the Cornishman’s innate shrewdness stood him in good stead. He alone knew the trend of the country, and the dead work needed to develop it. He argued that some of these mining leases would inevitably be forfeited, owing to non-compliance with labour conditions. So he waited. His foresight had not deceived him. As the leases fell through, he lodged his application and secured them, always keeping his eye steadily on that big plum, the Monte Cristo block. He waited"live years before this last lease was obtained. TEE ETOET OF THE MINE. Then he went to work all alone, sometimes not seeing another human being for months, fie sunk a shaft, timbered it, filled bags with the dirt below, climbed to the surface and hauled them up. He drove and cross-cut on two levels, and sunk again through about 50ft of very hard oxidised cement, flow a man of his age could have done this heavy work unaided is a marvel; but of this drive he washed fifteen loads for a yield of 2189 diamonds, and proved the drift to be the commencement of a deep lead. After this, ho sunk an air shaft, which waa destroyed by flood, and before he could get another one completed he succumbed to bad air, and waa laid up for six months. As soon as ho was able to work again, be followed up this drive with a tunnel 200 ft to test the extent of the drift, sunk n third shaft, and from this one opened up a shallow level so rich that he christenedit the Bonanza. So far, although sending parcels of gems to London, Captain Rogers had kept his own counsel, bub now, having proved his property, he invited experts to visit it, and very astonished they were. They round that this dauntless octogenarian had with his own old hands accomplished the work of opening up a great mine, displaying such consummate judgment that the upper level offered" room for two hundred men to start blocking; that the drift had been traced to within 150 ft of its matrix (which crops out on an adjacent hill), and sufficient of the 40ft laid bare to yield a ton of diamonds! The whole of this drift is diamond-beating; it is found to average 200 stones to a one-horse load of 27 cubic feet, and in one part yielded 2500 stones to the load. This one lease is for twenty acres. The Monte Cristo mine itself is a veritable mountain of diamonds, pronounced by experts the richest mine ever known in the world. The stones are declared in London, Amsterdam, and New York equal to the best Brazilian gems, but of so adamantine a hardness that special machinery has had to bo erected in London for cutting them. Its output must influence, if not govern, the diamond market, which has already had to bo nursed because of the influx of Capo stones. Should the matrix prove as rich ns the surrounding country indicates the mine will ba worth a kingdom. The quite recent despatch to England of twenty sample bags of wash dirt taken from all parts of the mine has strengthened a re-' port that Captain Rogers has received overtures from from a great house, believed to be the Rothschilds. His advanced age and partial blindness —which latter now compels him to have an assistant at the sorting table—are strong arguments in favour of realising, but tbe pluckv old fellow says if he were twenty years younger, or had a son to take his place, ho would not accept two millions-for the property. In spite of this bit of bluff he will have to deal, and as money is still scarce here the Monte Cristo mine will probably become the property of Jew capitalists. I THE AUSTRALIAN DIAMOND. The commissioner from whose report we glean these particulars, says the wash when seen underground, is of an uninteresting greyish colour, and all water-worn material. A dark green pebble, shaped like a kidney-bean, runs through it like

plums in a pudding, and wherever these pebbles are thick the diamonds are thick also. Like that in the diamond India and Brazil, the wash-dbt contain* jaspers, quartz, sgat?, sandstone discoloured by oxides, mangarute, trimonito, conglomerate, quantities of small gems, rubies, garnets, sapphires, zircons, tourmaline and topazes; also gold and plating in sufficient quantities to contriiStfte materially towards working expenses. la passing through the drive the commissioner noticed in parts the face of tbe had disturbed “ as if rabbits had been scratching there.” " That’s where the ladies have been,” said the captain, who gallantly permits lady visitors (and you will not be surprised to hear be has a good many) to carry away souvenirs. The Bingara diamonds are white or yellow, but mostly white. Some red ones have been found, and one rare green one, which unfortunately some one took a fancy to. The largest, as a rule, are about two carats, but one of eleven carats has been found. It is believed that large stones will be unearthed when the matrix is driven on. The price received uo to the present is £1 Os 6d per carat for white stones and 7s 6d per carat for small off-coloured diamonds. The hardness of the Bingara stones, which increases the cost of cutting, affects their price. A curious character of some of the diamonds is a cobweb formation in tbe stone, and twin diamonds have also been found. Mr Warden Lawson, recently sent by the Mines Department to inspect the Monte Cristo, broke down 651 b of washdirt, washed it in the presence of a party, and obtained from it sixty-five very nice stones. He broke down and sent unwashed a similar quantity of dirt to the Chicago Exhibition, together with a number of diamonds. From tbe commissioner's account it is evident that Captain Rogers’s methods of washing, sorting, &c„ are primitive, and not adapted to deal economically with large bodies of tbe drift. He is just now inundated with visitors, and no doubt it is an interesting spot. A story is told of a learned professor who went to spend a day; on the ninth day he had to be dragged away.