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point to which quartz was traced in the mine was in a winze sunk to the depth of 27 ft. below No. 3 level, where gold was said to still show in it, but it is evident that from No. 2 adit downwards the values fell rapidly. The last crushings, totalling 1,000 tons, put through the battery in 1903, obviously came from the lower horizon in the workings, and only yielded an average of 4.84 dwt. gold per ton, whereas the average of previous crushings was 12.85 dwt. Dr. J. Henderson mentions[1] that he was informed by Mr. T. O. Bishop, Inspector of Mines, that above No. 2 adit a rich leader occurring about 2 ft. in the hanging-wall was mined with the main ore-body, but that this leader was lost below that level. The fact that such a leader was worked has further confirmation in a remark in the Mines Report for 1897, p. 117, to the effect that on No. 1 level a drive was put in about 8 ft. to the eastward and a rich leader struck showing gold freely. The distance of this leader in the hanging-wall is greater than that mentioned by Mr. Bishop, but the probability is that the formation referred to in both cases was identical, and if the leader was lost below No. 2 level that would account for the falling-off of the gold values in the lower part of the mine, the best gold being evidently in it. There seems also to have been a decided shortening of the shoot from level to level, for whereas it was nearly 400 ft. long on No. 1 level it was only about 100 ft. in length on No. 3 level.
In 1902 the company was reconstructed as the Mount Paparoa Goldmining Company, but the new company did no good, and in 1904 the battery and other plant was sold to the Garden Gully Gold-mining Company, which transferred it to the valley of Roaring Meg Creek.
At least seven or eight other reefs were found to outcrop in the vicinity of the Croesus, all of them having the same north-and-south strike and easterly underlay. In common with most of the reefs of the district, they were bedded veins occurring in the greywacke and argillite country with which most of the West Coast mines are associated. A good deal of prospecting was done on some of them. In the Croesus property itself a crosscut was put in about 1889 to intersect one of them 160 ft. below the outcrop. This reef at surface was 2 ft. in width, and was said to show favourable prospects, but no record exists as to what were the results of the work, from which lack of information the conclusion may be safely drawn that the reef was either not picked up in the workings, or else was found to be too poor to pay for mining. In the Homeward Bound Claim, a small leader carrying gold is said to have been intersected in an adit driven 60 ft. into the hill. Other ore-shoots carrying more or less gold were got in such claims as the Sunlight, Poneke, and Corrie’s Reward, but although much work was done on the two first-mentioned of these the claims never reached the producing stage. Apart from the Croesus, the only other claim on the field from which any crushings were taken was the Taffy. In this claim several small veins or leaders were found, one of them said to be 3 ft. wide at the surface, but the area on which the claim was situated was subsequently found to be very badly broken by faulting, and none of the veins could be traced down more than a few feet. The formation from which the gold was won from the claim consisted of a band of country rock carrying numerous minute stringers and veinlets of quartz, which was worked by open-cut method. The company put up a light five-head battery and for a time worked the open-cut on wages,
- ↑ Geol. Bull. No. 18, p. 175.
