NEW ZEALAND MINING

West Coast Times, Issue 10532, 16 July 1897, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND MINING

The following is from a London paper's special correspondent's preliminary New Zealand letter :—

I will not in this preliminary article speak of any one mine in particular, as T shall have occasion to criticise each big concern separately! and at length, but I would warn the investor that most of the so-called developed mines have been worked outjdown to a considerable.depthj and that few, if any, have any development ahead of a battery. They have all worked if rom hand tojmouth for the past thirty years, not continuously, but iv fits and starts, as the Auckland people have had pluck and the money to gumble with Thus an English shareholder in a going concern is no better off than one in a new prospect, because the so-called "developed mine" will require new machinery, expensive pumps, and a large sum spent upon opening up new ground before it can make any adequate return upon the large capital which is the essential part of au English company. The same amount of money spent upon well-prospected area would result in the opening up of virgin mine which might pay for years. Because a mine has paid dividends'^ or twenty years, there is no reason whyit should go on paying, and if the local people thought they could carry on they never would sell. They sell because they are at the end of the gold, and have no new ground opened up. Dozens of mines are now in the hands of the promoting syndicates ready for flotation. They have been all more or less "gutted," and all providedjwith obsolete machinery, which must be replacedaf the mine is to pay dividends. At the Thames, at Coromandel, and at Kuatonu therej are mauy mines which have done well in the past, but few of them have now any ore in sight which i would pay to put through the present mills. Down South at Reefton and Otago the same thing applies. There is still a vast area quite unprospected which will one day be found .to contain payable reefs, vut prospecting here in the densely wooded and precipitous; gorges is very slow work, and, even when a reef is found roads have to be made and the ground cleared. English capital may be well employed in opening up new country, and the Colony will be immensely helped by such work; but I cannot advise s investment in shares of fold mines highly capitalised and with no amount of ore in sight.

If New Zealand is to become once again a big goldfield, with a big series jof payable mines, it must be on low-grade propositions. There are huge reefs all over the country which have never been touched. The Auckland people had not the^necessary capital to tackle any reef that did not give at least £10 a ton return, but to-day, with cyanide and mod-ern-batteries, £2 10s. a ton will pay handsomely. Mining in Anckland is not a simple proposition; the gold is not coarse and the ore not free-milling ; the .rock is all highly mineralised, and requires special treatment. The value of the gold is low ; much of the bullion is more than half silver. Iron, copper, zinc, antimony, and arsenic are found associated with the gold, and a simple battery will not extract 50 per cent. Float gold is common; cyanide is a necessity, and even here the ordinary plant is nseless in i case 3, owing to various acids which neutralise the effect of the cyanide. Those who would invest in New Zealand mines mus t bear all these things in mind.

West Australia is full of simple propositions with free -milling ores, and is an easy country compared with New Zealand; but Maoriland has many advantages which

poor West Australia lacks. There is any amount of water — enough, in many instances, to run the battery without steampower- The conformation ofi;ho ground (so like California that one may often imagine oneself to be riding up a canon in that land of gold and fruit) lends itself to cheap mining. The precipitous hills give hundreds of feet) of backs, iirsd are covered with excellent timber. There is no lack of efficient miners, and there are numbers of gold-beariug reefs. Those

that carry any considerable aiuount of gold have been well worked for many years, but the loar-grade reefs, some of forty to fifty feet wide, will now have their day, and we may look for the time when New Zealand will possess mines like the Alaska Tread well and the Homestake. Ido not think this time will be during the present boom, for such mines take years to develop. We shall have a period of bitter disappoiutment to face in New Zealand as in Western Australia. Few, if any, of the old mines which have been taken up will pay their way upon the huge capitals. Mining here must be PM ungn, m iftd^njl M j ft WUSfc

be looked upon just in the sams way as a brewery or an ironworks. Mining and milling cost about 255. to 30s. a ton, and no one should invest in any mine unless he can see that the mine can be made to pay a dividend at this price.

Shareholders should insist upon knowing what ore reseives there are in sight, and what they will average per ton. It is not a difficult matter to ascertain roughly. No mine should be floated unless at least three or four drives hava been put in along the course of the reeE for at least five hundred feet. Every fathom oil the reef should be assayed, and the ore in sight measured up. We want no ridiculous reports which say that the reef will increase in richness at depth ; reefs don't do this. Experts who tell you what , reef a will do aro mere charlatans ; no human being can say what any reef will do. You can never see beyond the end of a pick. What an expert can do is to measure up a reet, and assay it, and tell you its value. He can find out the cost of mining and milling, and then say if he thinks the mine will pay to work under its present conditions. More than this no one can say. New Zealand badly wants some good experts, and the more highly trained they are the better, for the problems here are not simple by any means. One great advantage New Zealand possesses ; there are no wild notions of extravagance floating in the air such as have ruined half the companies in West Australia.

Economy is the order of the day, and mine managers who work economically are as £much respected here as they are despised in West Australia. There are too many Scotsmen in New Zealand for extravagance to find favor, and it meets with the contempt it deserves. Indeed, parsimony and cheesparing are carried to a positively hurtful point, liconomy is a good thing, and better in mining than in any ether business ; but {even in running a mine it sometimes pays to spend money freoly, and this is never done in the Hauraki Peninsula, perhaps because there is no money to spend.