THE OTAGO GOLDFIELDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2211, 16 July 1896, Page 16

THE OTAGO GOLDFIELDS.

THEIR PAST HISTORY, THEIR PRBSENT POSITION, AND THEIR FUTURE PROSPECTS.

(By Ova Special Commissioner.) no. xiv. WAIKAIA. There is perhaps not another goldfidd district in Otago that has suffered so severely from ' neglect, or one that bears so many visible and striking evidences of outward decay, as Waikaia; noi 1 is thore another district at the present moment that boids out fewer attractions to the working* miner. And yet it is only a little more than a twelvemonth ago that the public were informed, on the authority of an official report, that an average weekly wage of from £2 10s to £3 could bs earned by any miner in the district who took up a piece of ground and worked it. Than such a statement nothing 'oould be more misleading — more hopeles'ly at variance with existing faci, and with the social and industrial life of the mining oommpnity. The average earnings of the working miners of tbe Waikaia, both now and at the time the report referred to was written, could not be said to exceed 25.? a week. The very Bnaall number who are so fortunate &s to control a fairly regular and reliable water supply can certainly depend on an average wage of £3 a week in tbeir ground (Juicing claim?, and the number of tho3e that can ascend to ihe jtill more comfortablo level of £5 a week is very much smaller. But, indeed, the latter might ba counted on the fingers of one band, and they no more represent the circumstances of the miners of the Waikaia than the occupant of a well-dowered church living can be said to represent thosu of the struggling underpaid army of bent Seed drudge 3 " passing rich on £40 a year." There are many hardworking miners in tbe Waikaia, who are sore pushed to provide themselves with the poorest nesessaries of life, aud I know as a fact that it is only through the indulgent kindness I of one or two of tha local storekeepers tbat I many of the miners are able to continue the hard, totally profitless, and barren struggle. Even the Chinese miners with all their inexhaustible store of patience, their modest ambitions, and their contentment with small things, have grown weary of the struggle, and during the last few years there has been a Mongol exodus, a regular &tampeJe of the heathen, from the district. During tny visit to the district an incident came under my observation that shows " as in a glass, daikly,'' the position whioh the average working miner ccoupies in the Waikaia. He was an old miner working out on the Muddy Terraces, tunnelling and stacking his waehdirt until rain fell and he could get sufficient water in some of the gullies contiguous to commence washing up. The land on these terraces is vested in the Southland School Commissioners, and is held' on lease at a rental almost nominal in amount— something like Id .or 2d per acre. ~The ground on the Muddy Terraces is more or less auriferous throughout, and the privilege of mining on it is p%id for at the rate of 2s 6d I a week. The miner to whom I refer hsd a heap of dirt representing the labour of. six week?— 1 no ;ain having fallen during the whole ot that period. When, however, the weather broke and there wee water to bo dammed up and temporarily prisoned in the gullies, the leaseholder of the land appeared Ui.on the tceue and warned those who had not paid up the weekly rent stipulated on that they were not to commence washing up. The arrears must first be paid. In the specific instance I refer to the man was I destitute. He had earned nothing during the preceding six weeks of dry weather, and now when the opportunity was at hand of converting his libour into its representative c&ih value ho is prevented from doing ho by the monstrously unreasonable character of the demand made upon him. I afterwards learned I that Mr Handyside, a local storekeeper, hearing of the old miner's perplexity, kindly interested himself in his behalf and quietad the I clamours of tho hucolic Shylock for his pound of flesh. The cass of this miner, with the oircumstances it discloses, is not by any meam exceptional in its nature. It preity accurately describes the position of a very large percentage

of the working miners of the district — the men we are officially informed whose earnings average from £2 10s to £3 a week. There are a good many men working on the Muddy Terraces, and it is estimated that the occupying owner cannot make much less thau £60 a year out of the halfcrown exaction* imposed on eaoh individual miner. Those who are thus taxed under conditions so unfavourable insist thai the lease should bo cancelled and the ground thrown open to the miners, as no doubt Ft would be was' the hardship ill involves brought under the notice of the Miuister for Mines by inch an authorised aud representative a body as a local miners' association. ■ The condition of the mining industry here dtffcrs from that of the . lea9t prosperous of our old goldfields iv the fact that the exhaustion of those of its resources on which the working miner could c»lcu!ate is more complete, and the field generally more hopelessly dead and iwespounive to unaided individual effort. There are, it is true, vast areas of auriferous ground that have merely b ;ea worried on the surface, and in many instances not yet subjected to any, even the ny st superficial aud intffective, methods of working. Nor is it possible to work them now except at a considerable expenditure on the introduction of w<iter.

The physical difficulties whioh have to be faced in bringing in water are of a formidable ohu&oter. The sources of supply available are riinote, and the country through whioh racecutting would be undertaken, rough and broken. The situation cannot be faced by tmall men, and on the incoming of tha capitalist the futurtfof the diutiict entirety depeud«. And it must be said that the -field for capital is a wide and limitless oae almost, and in every instance in whioh the gi'uuud throughout the district has been worked on proper lines it has never failed to give generous pro if of its richness. Local tradition gives ihe field premier rank with Qabtiek Gully in the eatly day», and it is certain that a very large amount of god has boen taken out of it. In earlier time! the district was known as Switzete, the name borne by the owner of Hyde Home station, one of the pioneer fettlers here. But iv later days this name was authoritatively discarded and the district chmtened anew, and given, the name of Waiknit. Tiie richest claims in jt&u past were held in Welshman's GuUy and Commissioner's Hill. The.*t v places were worked principally l>y paddocking and sinking, and have been Mncc then repeatedly but superficially worked. The gully is being now explored chiefly by Chinamen under almost prohibitive difficulties. It would admittedly pay well if worked on the hydraulic) jyfit&m. The Argjle Company should bs Me to control the whole of the ground, as their pipes cross Winding creek, which cannot be much more than a mile and a-b.*if from the creek in the comae of the oompany's race. They should be able to take a supply of water on to tbe gully at a cost of about £1000, and it is not at all unlikely that they may do so some day. Commissioner's Hill, which in some respects resembles the Blue Spur, only lint it has no cement formation, was first worked iv 1666, aud yielded Jarge quantities of fine scaly gold. The greater 'part of ft is now washed away right down to tbe bed rook, affording eloquent testimony of tb.9 unconquerable industry and resource of those men of the early days.

Not far from this point is anocher hill known as Five-acre Hill. This somewhat misleading name it received because of the fact that the party who first took up ground there were restricted to a five-acre holding. The party referred to were Messrs Skene and Haast, the latter of whom is now chairman of the Southland County Council. They brought in a 30-head water race at a cost of £7500 which they rented to the" miners, having for some reason decided not to work the ground they had taken up. The miners worked right through the hill from one tide to the other, at a depth of 60ft or 70ffc, leaving unworked grouud on each eide of them. There yet romaius on the hill five or six acres of ground that have never been worked, and it b possible this will eventually hi takea up and worked by the Argyle Compaay, who now oontrol all the original water rights.

Thfi Argyle Hydraulic Slu'cing.Company, to which I have already ma d-j passing roftrenoe, holds three olaims in the neighbourhood of the towuship, amounting in the aggregate to 60 acres. One of these,' an elevating claim, is Bituated at Winding Creek Flat, another,' a ground sluioing olaim, is on Frenchmen's Hill, aud a third on Hoapital Spur. The latter they have not yet ctratnenced to work, but no time will be lost in putting it also under tribute, when the company have increased their prtssnt water supply. Before doiug this they will have to put a syphon aoross Winding creek, which will cost about £1000. They will then have sufficient water to keep their three claims running together. The company consists of five shareholder*— Messrs Stewart (of the Island Block), Mr William Sutherland (of Lawrence), and Mr John Brown (Dunedin). Their elevating claim' they purchased a couple of mouths ago for £1200 from a party of miners who had been working it by ground sluicing, and since then the company have spent an additional £1500 on plant and water race. The race has its sourco in the Argjle creek, which rises away up in the Whitcombe range, a distance of 12 milos from the olaim. This is the same race that Messrs Sltene and Haast brought in in 1863, the Argyle Company having now acquired it at less than a seventh of what it originally cost. The company have a right fco 28 Government beads of water, and they have a fall of 300 ft. Thay employ 10 men in their two claims now working, and their expenditure in wages amounts to £110 a mouth, the whole of whic'a circulates through the distriofc. They have only opoued out their elevating claim on the flat during the last week or 10 days, and do nofc ezpicb to go' any gold until they reach tho bottom, a depth of abjut 40ft. The grouud on Winding Creek FJat Ins never been bottomed. Last year, a party of miners put an engine on ib and set abou!; sinking a shaft, and at the en-J of 12 weeks, haviDg got down 14»t during that time, they found themselvej unable to oombat the water, and were compelled to abandon the uuderfcakiug. As au illustration of the relative powers of the old and nan sy*tei2fl. it may be

of interest to state that the company's elevator subsequently went down the same depth in 18 hours that the engine had taken 14 weeks to assiit in excavating. More extraordinary still : The elevator for the time mentioned had sunk a hole a quarter of an aore wide, while the engine party had only scooped out a 12ft section. The ground is light and easily worked, particularly . the deep formation ; but the bine fohist wash, whioh has evidently been carried down from the head waters of the adjacent creek, id coarsa and heavy, and is highly spoken of in the district for its goldcarrying oapacity. Toe company have only been seven weeks working their ground sluicing claim, which' they also acquired by purchase at a reasonable figure. The previous owners were using only from three to four heads of water, and allowing a very much larger snrplus to run to waste. They employed a ground ditch canvas hose for washing away their ground, bub the company now in possession are working with a solid pipe line and unng 4iu nczzles and 15 heads of water. Their sluice is 3ft wide, and they have shifted during their first month exactly as muoh ground an thtir predecessors put away in 12 months. They are uiing five times the quantity of water the previous owmw used, working 24 hours to their eight, and putting away about 20 times the amount of staff the other s^ were doing. This is the grand secret of ouccassin modern mining, and even under such constraint ground of poor or indifferent quality is bound to pay, in proof of which the company for six weeks have washed up 60oz of gold, whioh waß deemed to be cob only satisfactory, but agreeably beyond their expectations. The company are in posseuion of a really valuable mining property, splendidly equipped and under careful aud competent management. Mr J. W. Stewart, wbo is also a shareholder, occupies the position of working manager, his brother, Mr ft. T. Stewart, discharging the duties of legal manager. Boti of these gentlemen have hp, 1 oun«iderab!e experience in the management of hydtaulio eluioiujf claims, and -h*ve now themselves Urge interest? in mining property. They are young men, working miners, and their sucoess is entirely the result of their own personal industry aad their ability to disceru ar»d take advantage of those opportunities that are the common property of all mea of th^ir class. Messrs .Stewart Bros, are also the owners of a bydra,ulic elevating olaim in the Diana il Snamp. a valuable property, on which they recently expended £1500 on plant and a 20-head water I race.

The whole of the grouud, known in timss remote frontf ours by the roysteriog— though, perhaps, quite appropriate— name of Donny brook, is now all washed away— all except the ground on whioh once stood the adjacent township of mushroom growth on Carnie Hill. Hare more th»n a thousand diggers lived and laboured, and held high and wild caraival for a brief seasod, and having enseamed and disfigured the face of the hills, and further disembowelled the gullies, they "fled— with the fever still hot upon them. The Argjle Company's race now runs over the ground, which is a reason why the csmpanyonnnot work it, at tho present atall eveati, even though the'r hauds wore not already full. Of the Landslip, about four milea bjlow the township, almost a similar story may be told. It was of this placs that Gabriel Read, soon after thed'mcovery of the Tuapeka goldfields, reported to the Superintendent of the province: " At the Landslip Hill I could wash line gold in every p'.aoe I tried, bub was not able to attain to the slate bedrook. I am of opinion that the hills to the north of Landslip will some day be valued for their auriferous treasures." The accuracy of the erplorer'o observations has been confirmed many times during the years that have passed since then. And even to-day thero are small parties of men, oven though their methods oc working are of the \q resb and most antiquated kind, still proving the value of Mr Read's testimony. The gold is got by tunnelling into tho hill and box ahrcing it with whatever water they can command. M'lvor and party, who have a very good water aqpply, truok their dirb.out and make from £8 to £10 a week. Longshaw and Moff Att, who hold the adjoiuiug claim, average, £5 a we v k each ; but there are others, whose facilities for working are leas effective, who can seldom reckon on rising above the more modest wage of '3os a week, and ttitl a few who can calculate on doubling thai amount weekly. The measure of success attained in nearly, every instance is dependent on the volume of water at the disposal of the various parties and the quantity of stuff they can dispose of within a given time. The ground along the spur is now all taken up, but thore is a large area of ground both up and down the river that has not been yet tried.

There is ono party of four and another of 10 working along the Winding creek. The former party are tunnelling and making small wages, and the latter ground sluicing, and averaging £4 10a a week, Kennedy and parfcy, the first of those I h*ve referred to, hwd lately acquired by purchase 50 acres of ground known to local fame by the' suggestive title of Break 'em All. This ground was onco worked by a company formed by Mr Horace Bastings, a former resident of Tuapeka. The company was not a success, and the claim eventually passed into the hands of the present owners. The latter also control all the water rights in connection with the property, which they sell to the miners at reasonable rates, their desire being to assist the miners in developing the auriferous ground in tha neighbourhood. There is a good deal of ground higher up the Winding creek that has never ytt been prospected, and possibly will not be uutil the relaxed energies of the miners have been braced and strengthened by the presence of oapital in the district.

An English cimpinjr with a capital of £11,000 Ins bern formed to work tho grouni known as in* Muddy Terrace", and they have already s cared a right of 40 b.Bftds of water from the Dome cceek. These terraces have long been known to be very rioh in gold, but they have n^vor been worked to advantage owing to the difficulty and expense of taking in an adequate force of water. The hill commanding the terraces is high and occupies an isolated position, and cannot consequently be approached unless by pipes coming from a higher altitude than itaelf. Dome creek, which has its home ab a hifih elevation in a wild country, is pro*

bably the only aonroe from which it is possible to command the terracei. No Burning that vrw ever devised could resist the violence of the south-west wind along the open valley that forms the approach to the terraces, and it will be, therefore, necessary to take the water for * distance of three or four miles through a line of piping. This will be expensive, but unavoid* able, Tbe company also intend to store each water as will allow them to supply the miner! with a sufficient quantity for sluicing purposes'. There are a large number of miners -at present working on the terraces, but none of them, for. obvious reasons, are making anything above a very humble wage. The representatives o! the' company have taken up a special claim of 30 acres, and no time is intended to be lost in commencing operations. Dome creek, to which allusion has jusb been made, is still to most of the old miners, and to a larger number still of the new generation of that class, a terra incognita. The rigours -of the climate during the winter season, and the discomforts whioh life in suoh a region impo3ei, is deemed to be too large a penalty to pay even for the admitted chances of making a "rise" during the short seaßon when the seal of winter is fast upon the mountain streams and torrents, and the Dome creek has in consequence fallen to its lowest level. A oouplo of years ago a miner came out here, taking with him athree months' supply of provisions— for this is an inaccessible region during the .wild winter months,— and at the end of the time mentioned he emerged from his seclusion wikh gold of the value of £300, During the succeeding winter others also went out, and returned equally well pleased with the result of their labours. The cold is certainly extreme, but timber' is plentiful, and there is no reason why life should not be made not only endurable, but in some respects pleasant— more endurable and more pleaaaot, certainly, thwi it o»n possibly be in the cheerless homes of tho neoessitoußunemployed workmen in the towns during the sama season of the year. An old miner, who had himself wintered more than once in this region, asked why the experiment of sending a detachment of the unemployed out here Rhould not bo tried. In winter the river bed m*y be worked, and the terraces (all virgin ground for the most part) oould be exploited. He had sten some very fine 3oz and 4cz nuggets taken out of tbes», and to tbe hardy and industr'.ou* tbe store of such rewards is still far from exhausted. At Waikaia thero does not seem to be much liking for «uch adventuree. Those of the oldtime'diggers whom fortune favoured and their own prudence and good sense saved from the excesses fch»t diitinguishcd an earlier day in the history of the mining industry have taken up land in tho district and settled down to farming pursuits. There are still otbors holding fairly good olaims, who refused divorce themselves From the old life, and a more unfortunate number who eke out an uncertain and miserable subsistence by tunnelling or rather burrowing into the terraces or hill sides. The yottoger men religiously escbew mining; it h*s no attraction for them, and it must be, tbeiefore, in the natural order of things that the timo is not far off when the individual miner, as a factor in the development of the auriferous resources' of the, .-district mu,>t disappear; This is ,nifl'"dfßtiay ■" in many -other places also,- biit htre jnpst visibly does one reid rha handwriting on tho wall: From' & national ttandpointauch a consummation is, of all thtDge, most undesirabla, and, from ifcsrriore homely and pathetio side, it must occasion a genuino feeling of regret, for nowhere in th« history of the colony oan we find so much that is brave and self-reliant and befitting the pioneers of a young community — the founders of a new nation, as in rrutathey wore,— so muon to admire and imitate, as we fiid in the lives of the men of tho Ws» But to thote who can command the employment of modern forces and the agencies whioh science has called into requisition, rather than to the individual miner and hi< ancient contrivance?, belongs tho mining industry of the future. The fact h".s already been accentuated atWftiluia, and, astUiogs are, it is in the int-rests of the diftriob th»t itibould be so, a? otherwise its rioa auriferous areas will continue as they are— an unlocked storehouse of wealth, mocking alika the efforts and the indigence of a fast-diminishing mining come muuity.

{To he continued.)