MINING NOTES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XX, 16 November 1895, Page 620

MINING NOTES.

An account of a new and, in some respects, startling method of nlacer mining is thus described in the Lindon Mining Journal :— ‘The case is of a rock bedded river with crevices formed by the eddying current, and the problem is to extract the gold from the bottom of the deeper recesses, where the movements ot the river are powerless to wash away the sediment. A venturesome and resourceslul Australian, struck with the conviction that much of the gold coming down the river must lie unclaimed in the bottom of the crevices, took a plunge one morning into a well like chasm, whose depth and position had struck him as being of a likely character. At first the prospect of his returning alive to the river bank seemed excessively remote as the depth of the recess had exceeded his expectation. The diver, however, who had pursued his education at the pearl fisheries, and who had observed the precaution of weighting himself with a heavy rock, kept bravely down, and in due course was able to snatch a handful of dust and shingle from the bottom. When, at length, he lay panting on the bank, his hand contained no fewer than seventeen nuggets, ranging in value from a few shillings to £7, as the reward of hh pluck.*