THE MINES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1764, 12 September 1885, Page 19

THE MINES.

Mr T. Grose has received a telegram from Lyell stating that for 20 days' crushing the United Alpine Company reduced 703 tons of quartz and obtained 6700zs retorted gold. A dividend of Is per share has been declared.

Our Wanaka correspondent telegraphed from Pembroke on Monday as follows : — " The weather is very severe here and the rivers are all flooded. A heavy snowfall has taken place at Criffel. Warn miners not to come yet. Salvationist party have bottomed at 60ft on good gold." An Auckland prospecting company has obtained' permission from the Native Minister to prospect the King Country for gold. The Wanganui prospectors have been driven off by the Natives.

From the cheering and encouraging news from many of our gold-mining centres (says the Dunstan Times), that branch of industry has apparently made a new start. No greater possible fallacy can be indulged in than that the goldfields of Otago are worked out, and if the present excitement is but worked up, and local efforts made to assist in prospecting, we are as certain as possible that good results will follow. We will not go outside of our own district to point out highly probable spots and localities that we feel assured will pay for a systematic prospecting, as within limits there are enough to maintain large and flourishing peoples. For a track of country bearing every indication of wealth, and a country that has as yet been barely scratched, there is no equal to the eastern face of the Old Mau Range, or igain to the southern face of the Dunstan Range. At the foot of both* of these ranges no end of gold has been obtained, and, indeed, some of the richest claims in the country are at the present time being worked, while every here and there along their faces at various altitudes gold-bearing veins of quartz exist. Again, there are the flats lying back from the Molyneux on either bank between Alexandra and Clyde. Spasmodic efforts from time to time have been made to test all the places indicated, but nothing of a systematic character has been attempted. With the symptoms of renewed life amongst the miners themselves, and the greater interest displayed by the Legislature and the Government in the goldfields, as evidenced by the liberal offers of assistance towards prospecting, it behoves not alone our local governing bodies, but also our local business men, to take up the question and initiate some scheme to unearth some of the wealth that lies at our very doors and awaits but the gathering. >

Mr W. P. Street, manager of the Golden Treasure Company, received the following telegram last night from the mine manager : — " Struck stone 18 inches thick this evening. Particulars morning." A Press Association telegram states that a representative of the Southland News was interviewed yesterday morning "by a practical miner of long colonial experience, who was t-ecently enticed by the highly-coloured newspaper accounts to leave New South Wales for the l new Mount Criffel goldfields, near Lake Wanaka, Otago. He reports that the best and only payable ground has been already taken up by three parties. The field is situated at a considerable altitude; there is no fuel in the locality, and for water supply they have to depend on the snow. Outside the small alluvial area already held, the party were unable to obtain the colour." The miner of long Colonial experience must have been easily misled, because he reports nothing but what miners have been repeatedly warned about. As to the extent of country, the statement of one of the miners from Lawrence who writes to the local paper as follows may be set against that of the practical -miner: — "There is a good scope of country to prospect, including Mount Pisa, but it will be some time yet before the latter can be tried. Old miners have good hopes that payable gold will be found on Mount Pisa. Men may be -.een with pick and shovel trying every likely place, but so far no new finds have been made.' Mr Warden Carew has been appointed by the Government to hold an inquiry at Lawrence into the dispute between the Blue Spur and

Gabriel's Gully Sluicing Company (Limited) and the claimholders at Blue Spur.