Dredging Enterprise.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIV, Issue 7499, 24 April 1899, Page 1

Dredging Enterprise.

The Mount Ida Chronicle saye During laßt week Naseby was visited by a couple of Russian gentlemen, M Heine and companion, and an interpreter, who have completed a tour of the dredging areas of this province. They were accompanied by Mr Walter Cutten. M. Heine is the representative of a syndicate which possesses extensive mining privileges in Russian Siberia. The fame of our New Zealand dredges, having penetrated to that country< and inquiries having satisfied the syndicate in question that the success of this mode of gold getting is a reality, an order was some time ago given to Messrs A. and T. Burt for the construction of a dredge of the type in use on the Clutha. After four months this dredge is now ready for shipment and the gentlemen who have jus£ visited us are so satisfied of the good value they are getting for their money and of the prospects of future profits from the rivers in their own country, and they have paid Messrs Burt the compliment of plaoing an order for two; more dredges all of the type of the Hartley and Riley, near Cromwell, to be delivered, f.o.b. at Dunedin, by the Ist August. The engines, which will consume as fuel the wood of the locality are to be constructed at Home, and the hulls; of .Siberian timber, which grows in plenty in the vicinity of their claim if that can be called a claim which extends 100 miles along the course of the river. There are already at work in that region several dredges, but of a type very different from ours, which require bnt two men ashift. Theirs require about a dozen per shift, and no doubt it is this im- ; mense economy of labor that has attracted the gentlemen who have visited ob.