ROMANCE OF NEW ZEALAND'S MINES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10860, 2 January 1907, Page 5 (Supplement)

ROMANCE OF NEW ZEALAND'S MINES.

The discovery of metalliferous ore and minerals in New Zealand was made shortly aifter gold was\ found in Aus tralia. It is said that Mr Hargreaves. the first discoverer of gold in New South Wales, before visiting that. colony, told several people in the Auckland district that gold would be found there, as the formation of the country reminded Kim of California, where he had been previously. It was not until 1852, however, that the discovery of auriferous deposits was made generally known by Mr C. Ring, of Coromandel, who found a small quantity of gold, intermixed with quartz, in a creek which now bears his name, but the hostility of the Maoris prevented furn _«.r discovery until 1862, when the distri. t was proclaimed a gold^ field. In the f-V.vth Island, small samples of gold were found in the Otago district in 1853. at- a place then known as Fortifications, but i:.)\v known as the West Taieri goldfield. The first payable goldfield was at CcUingwood, in the Nelson district. It was jpened in 1857, when the total population of the colony was only 50,000, and in that year 10,4370z. were produced In 1861, gold was discovered at Gabriel's Gully, in Otago, and- the news (lashed like lightning throughout the whole of the Australian goldfields. The first real discoverer of gold in payable quantities for working iu Otago was Mr Edward Peters, a native of Bombay. In 1858 he found gold in the south branch of the Tokomai- - riro.. river, known afterwards as the ! Woolshed diggings. -Later on, he found gold iii a gully. near the north bank of the Taupeka" river, not far from Gabriel's Gully, which was discovered at a later \ date by Mr Gabriel Read. The discovery of the famous gully was made known in -if.une,' 1861. By the end of December Jin that year, 187,696 ounces of gold, representing a value of £727,321, had been produced from, that locality alone, and the population of Otago had increased in six months from 12,000 to 30,000. The' 'Hand-book" sets out to dissipate the idea that the extraction of gold means a loss to the colony, instead of a gain to it. . In support of this contention, it points out that four compames in the Hauraki Mining District paid upwards^ of £400,000 in dividends during the past lycar, and one company, the Waihi, had disbursed upwards of £2,000,000 in dividends. The group of mines worked under! the management of the Consolidated Goldfields of New Zealand, at Reefton, has. paid £125,487 in dividends against a subscribed capital of £242,378, and the Progress Mines of New Zealand, an off-shoot of the Consolidated Goldfields, have disbursed in dividends £226,875, a working capital of £50,000. The Keep-it-Dark Mine, at Reefton, has ipaid £145,666 in dividends, or at the 'rate of £7< 5s Bd"per share, while only £6208, or 6s 2_«d a share, has been called Aip. During the past year, the golddredging companies listed on the Dunefdin_ Stock Exchange paid £102,446 in .dividends, and some of the companies :Jiave given shareholders phenomenal dividends, compared' with the capital invested. The Electric Company, for instance, paid £116,350, against a paid-up capital of £26,000; the Hartley and Riley Company, £79,625, against £6300 in calls ; the Maiiuherikia £26,700 against 4,6000; the Golden Gate; £23,250, ' against £25,000; the Moa, £22,700, against £6000. > Altogether, siity-eight golddredging companies and parties, which furnished information for the "HandHook," paid in dividends £528.322 against a called-up capital -of £332,490. f The records of the early days of goldniining in New Zealand read like a romance. The Thames was the first field on which limited liability companies operated, and some of the dividends paid there are available. Hunt's Shotover claim gave £40,000 each to the four original discoverers, and afterwards paid £15,120 to the shareholders in the company that purchased it; the Long Drive Company disbursed £82,000 in a few years ;' the Golden Crown Company paid £141,904, besides a large sum derived by'4-he original shareholders; the Caledonian Company paid £553,440 during the first year of its existence; the Cambria Company paid £48,825 in one year; .the Moanatairari Company disbursed the Nonpareil Company £14,670; tbe Kuraniii Company £41,227; the All Nations Company, £41,445 ; the Cure . Company, £17,000 ; the.; Manakaii Company, £15,750 ; the Old.- ; Whau Company, £11,650. In later years the New Prince Imperial Company paid £60;750 in dividends in threo years from a mine that was sold for £800. Even __as late as last year, the Waiotahi Company, which has been a consistent dividend-paying company dur- .. ng , the past thirty years, disbursed £51.000 in dividends. In Otago it is currently stated that the Bendigo Mine, near, Cromwell, paid £70,000 each to the five original owners.

The past twenty years have seen a great development , in coal-mining. In 1885, the coal raised in the colony was 511,063 tons; in 1895, the quanti% was 726,654 tons; and in 1905 it was 1,585,756 tons. In other words, in twenty years the output of coal has trebled.— New Zealand Mining Handbook.