THE LAKES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 417, 15 April 1870, Page 3

THE LAKES.

Queenstown, April 12. 'The season of dry weather which we have experienced for sbmething like two months has broken up and from noon on Friday last until sundown on Sunday it rained incessantly. Such a downpour has not been experienced for the last two years. To the miners it was particularly welcome, as they were getting very shwt of water; so what with the rain upon the lowlands and the snow upon the high ranges there will be a plentiful supply of the liquid element until king Frost seals up the water-courses in bonds of iron. Tho agriculturists have also much reason to ho thankful. The rain will have softened the hard ground, reducing in a very great degree the labor of ploughing, which occupation the long drought rendered rather difficult in new ground. Mining operations in tho neighborhood of the Shotover are in a most flourishing condition, and I question whether the yield of gold averaged more per head even in the palmy days of this ’modern “pactolus,” while so far as the business people are concerned, things never were better, as there is plenty of money spending and no bad debts are made. At Skipper’s Point a township is forming. The tunnelling cl ims and the works at the Nugget Reef are mainly instrumental in attracting |a large population here. The yield of gold in some of the f/riner is something fabulous. Shareholders in Finney’s and Aspinall’s are netting £I.OOO per month. The Nugget and Cornish Company are busily engaged preparing for the erection of their crushing machine. They have purchased the plant of the British American Company, at Skipper’s, which they intend removing at once to their mining lease on tho Shotover. On Friday last I paid a visit to the dredge now working a little above the Sandhills on tiie right-hand branch of the Shotover, and I am happy to say that little doubt exists about the 'thorough success of the now enterprise. The machine is moored in tho middle of the river, and operations are proceeded with precisely in the same style as on the Molyneux. Of course there is not tho same depth of water, still there is plenty to float tho dredge. Tho stripping is between tea and eleven feet. The washdirt is about one foot in thickness, composed of heavy gravel and boulders, intermixed with blocks of cement, and laying upon a false bottom of decomposed granite and schist intermixed with clay. In no part of the river about here has the main bottom been reached. The Shotover above the Sandhills runs through a broad flat. The rocky gorges through which the river runs elsewhere entirely disappear and giv a place to a line open country which enntinues for about eight miles up to the base of the great dividing range From prospects obtained it is thought that throughout the whole of this distance the river will pay for credgmg, while in numerous places below its junction with thoKawarau similar opportunities present themselves. The work in rather more difficult than on the Molyneux, the bottom ground being set much closer and finer, and requires great labor to break up. The shingle—or as you term it in yonrdistrict the “ sh”—travels very fast after a rle in the river, filling up any opening made by the dredge in a very short space of time. To overcome this diliculty it will be necessary to erect dams or break waters. The proprieto s are Messrs. Ashworth, Greeves, and Company, from the Kawarau Gorge, who style themselves the Enterprise Company, their vessel bearing this designation. It was built by Mr. George Aitken, and is about the largest maching yet in use, being thirty seven feet injlongth by) a width of fifteen feet. By an ingeniously contrived undershot wheel it pumps its own water the sluice boxes being thus supplied independently of manual labor. Ad the timber used in the construction of the dredge is rod birch from the heali of Lake Wakatip. For boatbuilding this wood is eminently suitable. When ready for work the total cost was a little over £7OO. This large expenditure arose from the material hj iving all to be packed from Queenstown. The jGouipany purpose putting on a night shift at once, so as to keep the work going on continuously.