MINING.

Otago Witness, Issue 2210, 9 July 1896, Page 18

MINING.

THE OTAQO GOLDFIELDS.

While it is possible for the Government to stimulate and assist the Industrious efforts of the mining community, and thereby extend the area pf reproductive and profitable labour, it is obvious that the development of the largest and the richest areas of the gold-bearing lands -of Otago must depend upon the introduction of capital from abroad. Experience has shown that local enterprise with the resources at its command is incapable in at least the majority of the goldfields districts of undertaking the heavy expenditure ■without which large areas of ground cannot now be profitably worked. One of the characteristics of the mining industry in ite newer stage of development is that while small parties of miners, provided with plant of a

! modern pattern, can, in almos^ every instance, other conditions being favourable, depend on a generous reward for their labours, larger and more ambitious efforts under local auspices, involving a heavy and lengthened expenditure of money, have in most cases been attended by failure, and not infrequently by disaster. Local resources have not been able to stand the heavy drain which such enterprises demand, and repeated failures accompanied by serious monetary losses have taken the "heart out , of mining enterprise on a large scale among tlie residents of the goldfields. There are immense ■areas* of auriferous ground that cannot possibly be worked to advantage except by companies whose financial strength is more than sufficient to provide i means for disposing of the many serious physical difficulties inseparable from alluvial mining in the Otago goldfields to-day. To such companies there can be no doubt the future belongs, and until their advent the industry, in the larger sense of which we now speak of it, must remain in its present unsatisfactory and comparatively unproductive state.

The same remarks, but in a more emphatic and exclusive form, apply to quartz mining. Just sufficient has been done in this branch of the mining industry to prove thd\ existence of quartz reefs of -great magnitude and richness in various parts of Otago. Next to nothing has been done in the way ' of systematic prospecting, "and only in a very few instances have any of the quartz reefs worked in Otago been treated on such lines as would -allow of a correct, or even an,, approximate, estimate being formed of their value. Twenty years ago quartz reefs, such as those in the Oarrick ranges, at Waipori, the Rough Ridge, the Bendigb district, and other places, averaged from 9dwt to lldwt to the ton under conditions of working of the crudest and most inferior character. At the Conroy's Gully reef, near Alexandra, a crushing of 25 tons of stone gave a yield of loz to the ton. Altogether less than 500 tons of stone were taken out of the mine, which, when crushed, yielded gold equal to £2005, while the total expenditure on the claim, including crushing machinery, &c, amounted only to .£3756. This is only one out of many similar instances that might be adduced. It is unnecessary to argue that, remembering the achievements of modern machinery and modern, science, backed up by capital, , such a mine would to-day pay very handsome returns on money invested in it. OE course, the causes that have operated to our disadvantage have prevailed generally throughout the world down to so recent a period as four or five years ago, and there is reason to think that the influences that have produced so beneficent a change within that time will soon produce an industrial awakening in .Otago. It is scarcely 10 years since it seemed as if the yield of gold throughout the world was doomed to undergo a steady decline. The richest fields were thought to be approaching exhaustion, but suddenly, as if in derision^ of prophecy, and certainly to the upsetting of the calculations of the highest authorities, a new era dawned, and in less -than seven years the gold yield of the world was -doubled. At the present moment we are brought face to face with a state of things not merely new to our day, but absolutely unique in history — a probable prospective geld glut. The principal cause that has operated to produce so singular a from four or five years ago, when precisely the opposite prospect was in view, has admittedly arisen from the introduction of the cyanide system. "Without this process, for instance, there would be no South Africa such as we see it to-day. The Transvaal ores are for the most part low grade ores; they carry only about half an ounce or less to the ton, and before the use of the new process not one-half the gold was saved ; but since the introduction of the cyanide process, and the treatment of the tailings and ; concentrates, there has been an increase in tfye gold obtaisjad of from 30 to 40

per cent., which, ' broadly speaking, furnishes all the profit there is iv work : ing the South African mines. ' But the changes wrought in quartz mining by the introduction of the new process have received even more generous illustration in the Auckland district than in the Transvaal. And there is no exaggeration in asserting that wh^t has been <Jone in both those places, marvellous as their mining records are, may also be accomplished in Otago under existing modern conditions!. ' A knowledge of the authenticated results obtained 'from gold-bearing ore in Otago, -under conditions of the most makeshift and unfavourable description, must inevitably lead to that conclusion. Opportunity alone is needed to demonstrate that fact, and there is every reason to hope that the time is not now far off when it will be afforded.