77
quartz, but before it was reached faulting of the shoots of ore again made itself evident, especially in the north end of the mine, with the result that below No. 11 level several shoots cut out and have not since been picked out. In 1918 all the surface plant round the shaft was destroyed by fire, and it was not restored or replaced till about 1922. When the plant was restored the company found itself unable to resume mining operations owing to want of the necessary funds, and the property was disposed of to a locally formed company, known as the Wealth of Nations Mines, Ltd. During the control of the Wealth of Nations and Energetic Claims by the Consolidated Goldfields Company the quartz crushed from them amounted to 300,230 tons, which yielded 127,651 oz. 12 dwt. 20 gr. gold, valued at £493,098 10s. 7d.
The new company, with the aid of Government assistance, sank the main shaft to No. 13 level, and drove about 400 ft. south to pick up a shoot of stone that had been driven and winzed on in No. 12 level. Good values were found in this stone on No. 12 level, and in the 70 ft. for which the winze was sunk, but, as bad luck would have it, when it was met with on the new level the values had died out, and it was not until stoping was carried up nearly to the foot of the old winze that stone of payable grade came in. The company has been unfortunate in other respects also, for last year the upper part of the shaft collapsed, necessitating very costly repairs. Operations have been practically confined to working out the shoot referred to, but a certain amount of quartz was won from two stopes in the north end of No. 11 level. Up to the end of 1926 this company crushed 18,502 tons for a return of 8,278 oz. 2 dwt. gold, valued at £32,902 15s. 4d. Including the figures for the Independent Claim, the total output for the two mines since they were first opened up, as nearly as can now be estimated, was 437,531 tons of quartz, which yielded 203,784 oz. 14 dwt. gold, valued at £788,438 5s. 3d. The only dividends definitely known to have been paid were those distributed by the original companies—namely, £67,000. This does not represent, however, the whole amount paid by the mines, for the Consolidated Goldfields Company paid £240,878 10s. 6d., a large portion of which—probably £80,000—must have been profits made from the working of these mines.
Taking Smith’s lode-series as a whole, it cannot be said that any part of it deserves much further attention from a prospecting point of view. That section of it from the “Old Dark” workings to the Pandora was very disappointing. The reef-line here is one of the most persistent and regular in the district, having been driven on for nearly 2,000 ft., but solid reef only occurred in it at long intervals, and such shoots as were found were very broken. Along the whole section, boulders of stone, many of them smooth and rounded as if water-worn, were found in numbers between the different shoots, leading to many conjectures as to how they came to be in the positions in which they were found, but probably the entrance of faults into the original fissure accounted for their occurrence. Between the “Old Dark” and the Wealth of Nations there is a stretch of virgin country in which driving on the lode-line might reveal the presence of unknown shoots, but it is likely that the company now operating on the Golden Ledge section of the Keep-it-Dark Mine will exploit this ground. As far as the Wealth of Nations and Energetic end of the line is concerned, the extensive workings of these mines have demonstrated that the chances of further payable ore-bodies being found there are slight.
It may be mentioned that on the north of the Energetic Claim two other companies, the Dauntless and the Macedonian, worked areas in the early
