MORE THAMES ROMANCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18197, 16 September 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

MORE THAMES ROMANCES.

BY F. WESTON.

GOLD UNDER STREETS.

The early " eighties" were notable for two rich finds that illustrate what may be called the romantic side of gold mining. The first of these occurred directly underneath one of the streets of Grahamstown, at the junction of Upper Pollen Street and Williamson Street. Here lay a piece of ground in which the Mariner's reef has been worked for many years by the Prince Imperial Company and its tributers, until its auriferous content was considered to have been exhausted, and the company went into liquidation. At the auction sale of his assets, the mining license and winding plant were purchased by Messrs. l A. and G. Price, ironfounders, for £250. It was purely a commercial transaction entered into for the sake of the old-iron value of the plant. As, however, Messrs. Price had the mining license on their hands, they were persuaded by their friends to allow a company to be floated, on the still remaining waves of the Moanatairi and Alburnia booms, to carry on prospecting in the mine at a greater depth than had heretofore been developed. Accordingly, a company of 18.000 shares was formed, and the sinking of the shaft resumed, under the management of the late Mr. G. S. Clark, just previously a successful tributer in the Cure mine. Only 6d per share (£450 in all) of the capital was called up, and the shaft had been deepened by only another 50 or 60 feet, when it passed through the underlie of Mariner's reef, with rich gold at the very point of intersection. At 80 feet of sinking a new level was openea up, and the reef driven upon, the rich stone being found to bo of very considerable extent. To confine the story to actual results, the first year's (1882) operations, though only the latter months were spent in work on the reef, yielded bullion to tho extent of 76930z., and the shareholders received £11,250 in dividends. In 1883 the stoping blocks were thoroughly opened up, and tho total returns through tho battery represented a value of £72,960, of which £40,950 was distributed. By this time the block on the run of gold above No. 4 level was exhausted, and, as the richness still extended downward, another lift of the shaft was sunk, so that the year passed without dividends. ■At No. 5 level (560 feet below the sea), the reef was found still to contain payable gold, but the main shot had not gone so deep. Its lower edge was, however, met with as the stopes rose, and it continued in hand until 1886, by which time the yield of the. mine for the five years had amounted to 43,0940z., and tho total payment in dividends to £60,750. A remarkable return from a property that had been sold for £250, and on which the original capital expenditure was only £440 !

Another mine in the same. locality, also under borough streets, that held a good deal of prominence about this periou was tho Saxon, whose shaft was situated opposite tho Thames Star office, and which, in the years immediately before 1890, paid its owners £12,906 in dividends. Ground That Had Been Contemned. i Even more remarkable is the story of the Cambria mine. This property "was situated on the sloping ground between tho centre of the Waiotahi-Moanatairi ridge and tho Waiotahi creek. Originaly, it had formed part of the Nonparie], which, in its day, was a fairly rich mine, but as it could bo developed only by sinking, and was considered to be too far from tho Big Pump for that to be practicable, it" had been thrown off by the Nonpariel proprietary as useless ground. In 1883 two claims, known respectively as tho Cambria and the Darwin, were taken by a well-known " hatter"—solitary miner —named Edwards, with the view of floating them into companies. For some time both propositions hung fire, as the impression as to the difficulty of working deep ground in the locality still prevailed. Eventually tho Darwin Company was successfully floated, and began to sink a shaft on the ridge which formed the boundary between the two properties. When it was about 150 feet deep this shaft passed through a reef, and gold was found at the point of intersection. In the meantime, Mr. Edwards had been unable to keep up payments of his fees to the warden, and only a few days before the gold was met with the warden had advertised the forfeiture of his title, and the fact that it was open for application. What ordinarily happened in such cases was that any person who chose to pay the cost to the Government of the advertisements was able to secure the estreated license. When there was more than on© applicant, tho license had to .be auctioned by the warden. In this instance there were numerous applicants. At the auction sale the bids quickly ran up into three figures—an unprecedented circumstance. Eventually two parties who remained in the competition agreed to coalesce their interests, and the license realised something like £600. Then another company, called the Cambria, was formed to work the forfeited ground. Wonderful to virtually nil tlie gold that was in the reef lay on iho Cambria side of the shaft. Under the management of Mr. H. W. Moore, who' lived at Waihi until a year or two ago, the Cambria mine, in the years 1884-7, yielded 37.6590z. gold, and tho company paid dividends amounting in the aggregate to no less than £77.122; while payable gold was still obtained for at least a year after that. But, irony of ironies, the Darwin Company, the actual finder of the run of gold, never obtained returns sufficient to p;fy its working expenses ! Waiotahi Eedivivus. All through the " nineties" the Thames was in a poor way, witli hopes centring upon the "deep level prospecting tunnel that was being driven with Government assistance from the Queen of Beauty shaft. It was not till IPOS that there came the revival incident to the finding of rich gold in the old Waiotahi mine, theretofore noted for its systematic and profitable working of small leaders. This time the sensational find was made in the main Waiotahi reef, at No. 5 level. In places the quartz was 10 feet in width, and the gold extended along its strike for about 100 feet and downward to a sixth level. The operations, in 1906-7, under the direction of Mr. George Warne, yielded £223,678 worth of gold, and £180,000 was paid in dividends. In the following year £149,833 worth was obtained, while the distributed profits amounted to another £117,000. Before the patch was exhausted the total amount of dividends rose to £400.800—the greatest result shown by any Thames mine since the davs of the Caledonian. And the Waiotahi patch stands to date as the last episode of any noto in the strange, eventful history of one of New Zealand's greatest goldfields. Space does not permit of a detailed account of tho introduction into the goldfields of scientific methods of dealing with ores. It must be mentioned, however, that these wero heralded by a series of lectures delivered on all the Hauraki fields in 1884 by Professor Black, of the Otago School of Mines, which laid the foundation of tho Thames School of Mines. Soon afterwards there was a flash in the pan through the experiments made by Mr. J. D. Lamonte- in the employment of water-jacket furnaces for the reduction of Thames ores by smelting. Still more notable, a year or two later, came the introduction of the cyanide process, first at Waihi and Waitekauri, and afterwards in other parts of the peninsula, and now the mainstay of tho mining industry,