PROSPECTING IN TASMANIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 1323, 7 April 1877, Page 4

PROSPECTING IN TASMANIA.

. For some weeks past (says the Cornwall Chronicle) a German and. three English gold diggers from, the Dunstan Goldfield, New Zealand, have been employed searching for;gold near the second .basin over the Cataract Hill. , They succeeded : in diverting Jthe course of the South Esk j riveiv at. one of ;the. bends, so far as, to leave one half of; its ; bed bare, expecting to, £qd «'it coyered' with sand, silt, , and quartz,, debris,! from , wbioh^-gold having been traced in both the South ,Esk and. Meander rivers — they -hoped to obtain a large ;yieid"t>f the precious metal. . Their labour has been wasted and their hopes disappointed, as all the bed of the river they could lay. bare consisted of hard rock vpth gcarcejy.any debris even in the ere-: Vices. Their theory was no doubt correct \

provided they) could -.have reached the pocket of silt, sand, and gold in the actual bed of the river ; but this they could not effect. •_, To do that, it would be necessary to entirely flame the river, diverting it into quite.a new-channel, but as this cannot be done without swamping and appropriating much private land as a river' channel, the gold, is likely to remain hidden for many more centuries. The Dun- - '. stan men being thorough alluvial diggers, declined to waste their, experience either upon quartz-reefs or the tin deposits of Tasmania, and have left the Colony— two returning to the Dunstan diggings, one to pay a visit to the Victorian gqldfields, and the German is now on the road to California,, where funning rivers containing golden sands forms a large portion of the science of gold seeking. The late Mr Hoyle|a,nd many. other enthusiasts expended much time and money in the vain endeavour to extract gold from the banks of the South Esk and Meander, and the' beds of those rivers, but the returns to the most,, persevering and industrious "never "amounted ' to more than "starvation allowance." . * .