OUR GOLD-FIELDS.

Colonist, Volume VI, Issue 582, 22 May 1863, Page 3

OUR GOLD-FIELDS.

QUARTZ-CRUSHING EXPERIMENT IN

NELSON CITY.

"We are glad to be able to report a most successful experiment at quartz crushing, which was tried yesterday in this city. By last vessel from Collingwood, Mr. Pritchard, chemist, imported seven or eight hundred-weights of quartz from the Collingwood diggings, for the purpose of testing the gold it contained. Messrs. Curtis Brothers happen to have a quartz-crushing machine here at present, and this they lent to Mr. Pritehard. Mr. M'Conlcey's portable steamengine was yesterday attached to this machine, and though only partially worked and its products hurriedly tested, the yield of gold per ton of quartz far surpasses the expectations. One sample which, however, was considered an unfair, or rather much too fair a Sample, yielded to the chemical amalgam a per centage equal to forty ounces of gold per ton! Another chemist, Dr. Tatton, calculates that it will yield about ten ounces per ton. The calculation is that if it shall produce an average of two ounces it would be an excellently payable field. "We saw one person in thcs yard take a small quantity of the crushed quartz in a shovel, and washing it very primitively at a pump, pick out speck after speck of gold, while much more was being washed away in the operation. This of course is only a partial and preliminary trial, but these results', coupled with the long known calculation of the talented Dr. Hochstetter, proves that for permanent working there is a vast supply of gold lying in the gold-fields of Golden Bay. Dr. Hochstetter describes the Aorere Valley from the Clarke River towards the south, to the Parapara north, as a gold-field of a superficial extent of about forty English square miles. The conglomerate deposit, part of which is now being tested as already described, he states to be, in some places, twenty feet thick. It was reported to the Doctor that one cubic yard of earth is worth 255. to 305., and where boulders occur it is worth much more. Dr. Hochstetter takes the low estimate of ss. worth of gold in a cubic yard, which is a payable rate, and, giving only thirty square miles, he calculates the value of the Aorere and Parapara gold-fields at £22,500,000 sterling, or £750,000 sterling per square mile.

This is an old story, for Dr. Hochstetter told it in 1859; but although the Collingwood gold-fields have been somewhat neglected, these scientific calculations have not been forgotten, and people continue to believe in the ultimate productiveness of Collingwood gold-fields. fhe establishment qf quartz-crushing ma-

chinery on a large scale in that district is an event not far distant if the subsequent results of this partial experiment prove one-fifth as propitious as the analyses already made have indicated.