GRAHAMSTOWN.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1660, 14 June 1875, Page 3

GRAHAMSTOWN.

(From our own Correspondent.) This day. SINGULAR STORY ABOUT

GOLD

Great astonishment was caused this morning by the Advertiser publishing statements respecting Stewart's alleged gold discovery, which could hardly be credited at first. The Advertiser says:—"Sometime ago a man named James Stewart had some pipeclay stuff crushed, with a splendid result, and sold two parcels of gold, amounting to about 100 ounces, to the Bank of Australasia. The police were on the alert; but he told them that they might impound the gold or subject him to any other penalties which the Act provided, but he would not divulge his secret, further than by saying that it came from the Ohinemuri district. He was, he said, only tracing up a lead or gutter, and if he was compelled there and then to make known the discovery and peg out, he would as likely as not be put off gold which had been discsvered and others might step in who would reap the benefit of his labours. The gold resulting from the crushing was returned to Stewart and sold. The report of such a return from a pipeclay seam set prospectors on the gui vive. Stewait's steps were fairly dogged. Many were the schemes laid to discover the find and track Stewart to the discovery, but without success. Pipeclay enough was found in a series of holes sunk near the Tauranga track, in the Waitekauri district, but of gold there was no trace. Recently Stewart himself has been as great a mystery as his discovery. As a great many are anxious to know nis whereabouts, and as we believe ourselves to be in the possession of his secret, we will divulge it to our readers. Stewart is in Sydney. He went there as a passenger in the Mikado on her last trip, and so far as we can learn, he has no intention of returning to New Zealand to finish the raciDg-up of his pipeclay discovery in Ohinemuri. In all probability the pipeclay crushed for Stewait came from Ohinemuri, but we are not co sure of the gold which it contained. We have no wish to affix an undeserved stigma upon any man, but anything which bears appearance of a miningswihdleweareanxious to expose. We have made some inquiry regarding his antecedents. Before the opening of Ohinemuri, Stewart was boss of a shift in the Union-Beach claim (formerly the Green Harp, of swindling notoriety), Coromandel. While so employed, the mine was turning out good specimens, and it is a remarkable fact half of the gold produced from Stewart's pipeclay crushings and that of gold produced by the Union Beach specimens, corresponds accurately. The alleged discovery was well timed too. Had such a rich find been announced before the opening of Tairna as a goldfield, suspicions would have been aroused by the splendid yield obtained from the Tairna Prospectors' test crushing covered in all probability of Stewart's heavy gold yields. Many were honestly of opinion that Stewart's find was a genuine one, and that it was somewhere in the neighbourhood of either Matoora or the Waihi reserves, and that he was holding over until those reserves were defined. It is quite evident that he confined himself to getting rid of gold in his possession, and we are informed that just before his departure for Sydney he disposed of a parcel of 103 ozs. gold. We cannot vouch for the truth of this statement but he certainly sold two parcels the results of two crushing?..