GOLD DREDGING IN B LIVIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2603, 3 February 1904, Page 25

GOLD DREDGING IN B LIVIA.

£30,000 WORTH OF N.Z. MACHINERY ORDERED. (Fkom Otto Own Correspondent )

WELLINGTON, January 26

Some six or seven months ago Mr W. H. Cutten, of Dunedin, and Mr TV. R. Faithful, examiner of dredgemasters in New Zealand, proceeded to Bolivia in the interests of a powerful English mining syndicate to report on gold dredging in the rivers of that country. Some £9000 spent in prospectingin Bolivia has given encouragement to endeavour to win golrl by dredging in and about the San Juan We Ora River in Bolivia, and Mr Faithful, who holds a power of attorney from the syndicate, has been commissioned to have constructed in Dunedin three powerful six cubic fe«t bucket dredges, to cost about £10,000 each.

The order will be placed within the next few weeks, and it is expected that, theparts will be ready for shipment about the middle of the year. Mr Faithful will superintend tho constrxiotion of tho dredges, and will proceed back to Monte Video in the vessel in which they are shipped to superintend their transit to Tupiza, >n Bolivia. Ihey will be forwarded by rail as far north in the Argentine as Jtijuy, and thon packed on mules and mule eai ts ■across the border to the Bolivian town m&n tioned.

Owmg to the scarcity of fuel — there is no timber or coal in Bolivia— the dredges will be worked by Peisel oil engines, and to become thoroughy acquainted with the v, orking of the.so engines Mr Cutten has cone to. Europe to study their workius

during R-icli time as the dredges arc I cin v constructed.

-Mr i'aithful, who has been coimmssi'jued to tako back a stafi of 25 skilled men to woik tho drodg^s, siatos that the neighbourhood of the nvcr is on a plateau, about 12,000 ft above sea-lovel. and the riverbed can be easily worked, as there a-re uo boulders whatovor, and the largest stones are not more thr.n 4in in diameter. Tht river is about 35ft at its extreme ticpth. Tho country. Mr Faithful 'ays, is most interesting, heing the lancl of the ancient and powerful Incas. who are said to have amossed vapt wealth prior to the> Spanish invasion. The place is about " a thousand years behind the. time." The Bolivians he. came in contact with were ncmads of a low casle and very primitivo in tlieir ways.