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was mined from this, but on being treated it only yielded 32 oz. 1 dwt. 10 gr. gold, equal to about 3½ dwt. per ton, which was far from being payable that the company closed down forthwith and went into liquidation.
Within the past few years the ground formerly hold by these old companies has been taken up again under prospecting licenses, and some further attention had been given to examining them. A new adit was put in on the old Britannia ground, and some gold-bearing quartz located, but the stone did not extend any distance in any direction. One of the Stony Creek Company’s adits was also put in repair and extended for about 150 ft., with the result that another short shoot of gold-bearing stone was found in it. It is very questionable, however, if the quantity of stone that is likely to be available would be sufficient to warrant the expenditure of the very considerable sum of money the erection of a battery to treat it would entail.
As far as the writer can see, the only hope of prospectors doing any good now in this part of the district is by close investigation of the country higher up than any of the old workings, as there is just a chance of finding there in situ the reefs from which the stone so far worked has been derived. It may be said, however, that prospecting of this kind would be most arduous, for the country is extremely steep and difficult of access.
Beaconsfield Mine.— The only other part of the Waimangaroa district to which any special reference need be made, by reason of the discovery of auriferous quartz, is a small run of slate in the Waimangaroa River about a quarter of a mile south of the Denniston incline. Here a small reef was found about 1890 in the bed of the river. A drive was put in on it a few feet under the outcrop, and fair values are said to have been got. A company known as the Beaconsfield was formed to work it, and a shaft was put down for 118 ft. on the north bank of the river, from which a crosscut was extended under the river-bed, which intersected the vein at 100 ft., when a drive followed the stone for about 70ft. A rise was made from the drive for 54 ft., where the vein was from 1 ft. to 2 ft. 6 in. wide, and in driving from the rise to connect with a winze sunk from the outcrop some very good gold-bearing stone was said to have been met with. Owing to the want of a battery to crush it, no stone was, however, taken out by the company, which abandoned the prospect in 1892. About 1899 the property seems to have been taken up by an English syndicate, which worked it for a short time under the name of the Twins Mine. This syndicate equipped it with a ten-head battery and a water-driven winding plant. The old workings were repaired and extended, but no development of consequence was made, and in the following year the plant was sold to the Despatch Foundry, Greymouth, and the ground was once more abandoned. A certain amount of stone seems to have been taken out and crushed, but no records concerning it are now available.
It may be mentioned that in the Waimangaroa and other streams in the locality heavy gold has been got in the alluvial deposits, and fine specimens of gold-bearing quartz, leading to the belief that somewhere thereabout rich reefs occur. The slate country in the neighbourhood is overlain, however, by coal-measures, leaving only small exposures of it here and there, and, as these have been greatly disturbed and masked by slips, the likelihood of the reefs from which the gold has come being discovered is remote.
