38
No more work appears to have been done either on O’Malley’s or Van Belle’s reef, but on another reef on the Nuggety Creek side of the spur an adit was put in for 250ft. This reef was named the Surprise, and was probably identical with McCarthy’s reef. In 1919 Mr. A. H. V. Morgan, Director of the Waihi School of Mines, visited the locality and advised that another adit should be driven on this reef 100 ft. higher than the one first driven, and that the two adits should be connected by rising or winzing. The second adit referred to was subsequently driven for 130 ft., the ore met with in the first 50 ft. being similar in character to that of the lower level, but at that distance from the portal the drive passed into disturbed country and the reef was lost. The assay results of eleven samples taken at regular intervals from 195 ft. to 250 ft. in the lower adit, and tested at the Waihi School of Mines, showed the average value for all the mineral content to be £2 15s. 4d. per ton. The results of six samples from the upper level gave an average value of £2 13s. 6d. per ton. The average proportion of the different minerals in the samples was as follows:—
| Gold. | Silver | Lead. | Zinc. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oz. | dwt. | gr. | Oz. | dwt. | gr. | Per Cent. | Per Cent. | |
| Lower adit | 0 | 2 | 16 | 6 | 10 | 7 | 6·8 | 1·0 |
| Upper adit | 0 | 0 | 22 | 7 | 15 | 16 | 8·6 | . . |
A small battery was brought on the field, mainly for the purpose of treating the gold-bearing ore of O’Malley’s reef, but it was not erected, and, as the company was not in a sufficiently good financial position to erect the costly plant necessary to deal with the more complex ores of the other reefs, no further work was done on the property. An application was made to the Mines Department for a substantial loan under the provisions of Part X of the Mining Act, but, in view of grave doubt as to the general values of the ore being as high as shown by the assays mentioned, and the difficulty of extracting the mineral content profitably even if the values were as shown, the application was declined.
There would have been some justification for testing the lodes at greater depth, and it is to be regretted this was not done, for deposits of this nature, containing base metals, frequently become denser in mineral content, and hence carry better values, as they go down.
MURCHISON COUNTY.
In Murchison County no reefs of any importance have been discovered. The finding of auriferous quartz at the Owen River in 1886 by Messrs. Bryne and Bulmer led for a time to high hopes that a valuable mining-field had been located in the county, but such hopes were very short-lived. The discovery was made from seven to ten miles up the Owen River from its junction with the Buller River. A number of claims, such as the Enterprise, Wakatu, Zealandia, Golden Crown, Bulmer Creek, Comstock, Better Times, and Great Eastern, were pegged out, a township was laid out, and quite a large settlement sprang into being. Within a year a two-storied fifteen-roomed hotel was built at a cost of £2,000, and a number of other large buildings had either been erected or were in course of construction.
