PROPOSED GOLD PROSPECTING AT CAPE COLVILLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8928, 17 December 1887, Page 3

PROPOSED GOLD PROSPECTING AT CAPE COLVILLE.

Mr. Thomas Barron, who has had considerable experience as a gold prospeotor, proposes to set out on a prospecting expedition over Cape Colvjlle and vicinity, if he can obtain some assistance from the Government and the general public. The country about Gape Colville is rough, and is covered with a dense forest growth, so that although on the Thames Peninsula, and not far from where rich mines have been iound, it has never been prospected. The range is here very steep, and there are no tracks, Mr. Barron proposes to get over these difficulties to some extent by having a boat which he could take into every little creek, which would form his baße of operations, and with which he oould shift camp at apy time, and be independent of tracks. Mr. Barron has just returned from a proßpeotiug expedition to the northern part of the Great Barrier Island, but there he met with no suocees. Frequently he would get on to veins and leaders of quartz, but after driving a few feet they would be lost, In the Greeks there are huge blocks of stone which prevent pros pecting. These are not boulders, au they have never been shifted by water. 11 Barron has a furnace of his own design for smelting purposes, which answers very wellIt seems that some persons who have known Barron as a professional rowing man, do not , think he can have any knowledge of gold prospecting, but in answer to that, he forwards a record of his experience on the West Coast and on the Thames, from which it appears that he has had abundant and varied experience in every kind of alluvial and quartz mining. We shall be glad to hear that Mr. Barron has been enabled to start prospecting on Cape Colville. Gold ought to be there, »s it is the seaward extremity of the peninsula which has been found to be gold bearing from the Tokatea range at Coromandel, to Waiorongomai, beyond Te Aroha. The proposal also to have a boat, which would enable the prospector to shift from place to place on the steep mountain range of Cape Colville, independently of tracks, seems to us a good idea.