MINING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1205, 2 January 1875, Page 7

MINING NOTES.

(by our country reporter.)

Over the Old Man Kangcs, about (iOOO feet above sea level, and in the inhospitable region of Campbell's Gully and Uppor Waikuia, exists a favourite summer diggings, and which is becoming a considerable source of attraction. The population there numbers about GO, one-third of which are Chinese, but this number is being gradually added to. Messrs Toy, Savage, and Co., five in party, have just completed a, tunnel 600 feet in length through a " slip" at Adelaide Point, Can'pbell's Gully. The tunnel is securely timbered throughout. The object of driving in tho tunnel was to facilitate the construction of a very lone; tail race, necessary to drain tho claini — a very largo and valuable one, and containing seven acres of ground. The party have been three years occupied in making this tunnel. It is expected that the claim, when in work, will yield £10 a week pel man, while it will take ten years to exhaust it. For a full share (a fifth) £300 is asked.

At the Wai Keri Keri Valley some capital ground has been opened, and upon the completion of Haiti© and Coaapany's water race from Chatto Creek, a very remunerative field of mining industry will be availnli c. [ hear of one party of four men, working- in a place called Hopeful Gully, whose four nionthg washing — which will be completed about Christmas- is expected to yield five hundred ounces of gold. The spur? of the Dunstan Ranges between Clyde and Gully— a distance, of fourteen miles — have been long known to be auriferous, but it hag only been within the last few months that water was available to test the auriferous value of the locality.

Artesian Veils might, with advantage, be tried on the Dunßtan Flat. Tho experiment would not be an out-of-the-way expensive ono, as, after passing through about one hundred and twenty feet of alluvial drift, the bed rock, a schist sometimes overlaid with sanilstone, is not immoderately hard. A bore -hole to the depth of 500 feet should afford a perennial gushing stream. Lakes Wakatip, Wanaka, and Hawea are between 500 and 600 feet above tlm level; besides, there must also bo a largo pont-up water-supply percolating through the rocky fissures of the high surroundinjf ranges, lv the primitive schist this couW undoubtedly bo tapped, and perhaps at a considerably less depth than that alluded to. The bore of the artesian well atGrenelle — one of the environs of Paris— is only eleven inches in diameter, and Mr Femud informs me that he should calculate the discharge as equal to what we understand here as thirty Government heads. This supply would be sufficient to convert the whole of the Dunstan Flat from a sandy waste into a state of equal fruitfulness. as the Monte Christo Gardens, opening up a source of almost unaccountable, wealth. As this water would only be required by the agriculturists and horticulturists fo.u,r months out of the year, during the remajnittg eight i,t would be available foi 1 mining purposes. The sanitary condition ot the goMfields towns is engaging the earnest attention of the inhabitants thereof. I notice that, both at Lawrence and Clyde, Municipal Councillors are calling up experienced medical assistance to put them iv possession of the exact sanitary condition of their towns. If Cromwell has suffered, and been made a scapegoat of, some good has resulted to the commimity at large. Little local anl personal jealousies have been laid aside, and the necessity to make some provision to preserve the health of the common whole reigns uppermost in the minds of worthy Mayors aua Councillors. This is how things should be civic functionaries have oftentimes be|)n complained about for poking their nosos into things not exactly th.eiy own, or within their province. It is, therefore, pleasing to find they are zealously trying to make amends for former irregularities by poking their noses, for once, in the right direction.