The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1887. GOOD NEWS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1647, 27 August 1887, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1887. GOOD NEWS.

Those of our readers who were m the colony twenty years ago and remember the rare old times which then prevailed, will be delighted to learn that there is a probability of their early return. A brief telegram m our issue oi yesterday gives us the gratifying intelligence that an assay, made at the Thames School of Mines, of stone from the recent find at Kikutua, gave one hundred and thirty six ounces of gold and two thousand five hundred ounces of silver to the ton of stone. Old diggers will, of course, take m at a grasp the full import of the announcement, but the great majority of our readers will pass it by as not worthy of a sscond thought. But let us sec what such a yield actually means. We will take the gold first and assign a value of £3 per oz, the Auckland gold ranging m value from £2 12s 6d to £$ 5 s P er ounce. Well 136 ounces at £3 gives The silver may be valued at five shillings per ounce and 2500 ounces at this price will give Adding tha value ot the gold and silver per ton together we have a nice little total of as the value of a ton of this stone. Such a yield g from stane — we do not say specimens — 1 has never been known m New Zealand, 3 and we very much question if it has 1 ever been known outside of the colony. • Some idea of the value of the discovery may be formed when we state that from four to fire hundred tons of stone have been passed through the battery m the 3 course of the week on the West Coast. ? Taking the lower figure, four hundred tons per week would give a gross 1 result Of TWENTY MILLIONS STERLINO. \ It will take our American cousins some j time to whip this. f With regard to the geographical 1 position of the reef or its extent we are left m a most excruciating state of ignorance but we can safely predic for it, the rush—not of ihe season but—of the century.