49
GREY COUNTY.
In Grey County the principal localities in which gold-bearing reefs have been discovered are those known as Langdon's, Blackball Creek, Croesus Knob, Roaring Meg Creek, and Moonlight, all of which are situated along the Paparoa Range, but no finds of first importance were made in any of them.
Langdon’s Reefs.—A little westward of Stillwater Junction, on the Greymouth-Christchurch Railway, a narrow exposure of greywackes and argillites occurs in the mass of coal-measures forming the surface in the locality. This exposure crosses the Grey River and extends to the south of it for perhaps a mile, but northward from the river it may be traced for probably twice that distance. As far back as about 1870 it seems to have been known that auriferous reefs occurred in it, but it was not till the discovery in 1879 of what was subsequently known as Langdon’s Antimony Vein that serious attention was drawn to them. A number of claims were pegged out. The finding of rich specimen stone in Langdon’s Creek led to a certain amount of prospecting which resulted in the discovery of the antimony vein referred to, which outcropped in a gully at the head of the creek, about 1,440 ft. above sea-level. Sir James Hector[1], reporting on the lode in 1879, stated that it consisted of five distinct bands, as follows:—
| Ft. | in. | |
No. 1, next the foot-wall, was quartz containing stibnite in irregular masses
|
2 | 0 |
No. 2, compact stibnite
|
2 | 0 |
No. 3, stibnite, including quartz in the form of nodules
|
3 | 0 |
No. 4, fine-grained mixture of quartz and stibnite
|
0 | 4 |
No. 5, breccia of slate (argillite)
|
1 | 8 |
| 9 | 0 |
Apparently when first found the lode contained high, if patchy, values. Hector states that assays of the first specimens forwarded gave results equal to 84 oz. gold and 36 oz. silver per ton, and that a sample taken by himself from the compact stibnite band yielded gold at the rate of 32 oz. per ton, other samples giving by assay from nil to 5 oz. 16 dwt. 16 gr. gold per ton.
It seems evident that the lode could not have lived far to the width mentioned by the geologist referred to, for when, a few years later, the locality was visited by Alexander McKay he found that the wide part of the lode had been worked out and the excavation filled by a slip, but an outcrop 3ft. wide was showing on the western side of the slip. In March, 1904, the reef was visited by P. G. Morgan, who states[2] that a lode 2 ft. wide, which appeared to be a bedded vein enclosed in argillite and greywacke, was showing in the west side of the slip, striking about 322° and dipping to the south-west at 75°. A sample taken by him from the spot yielded on assay only 5 dwt. 16 gr. gold and 1 dwt. 21 gr. silver per ton.
Some time in the early “eighties” a parcel of 10 tons of ore from this lode appears to have been shipped away for treatment, but no records are available as to the results. It is probable that this was the only ore won
