OUR QUARTZ REEFS.

Evening Star, Issue 2981, 7 September 1872, Page 2

OUR QUARTZ REEFS.

(From the Cromwell Argus.) After one of the most severe winters experienced since the discovery of the goldfields in Otago, the weather has broken, and spring has been ushered in with <'alm and genial weather, giving every promise of a season especially favorable to mining interests, There is every prospect, with the advent of spring, of a rigorous and successful prosecution of mining operations over every portion of the Garrick Range. By the Garrick water-race, it is confidently expected that from six to eight sluice-heads of water will be made available for use on the range during the coming summer. A powerful impetus will thus be given to the working of the reefs, which has hitherto been carried ou under the disadvantage of a scanty and uncertain watt r supply. Every week almost we hear of some fresh discovery, either of entirely new lines of reef, or of new leaders or thicker veins in claims a’ready opened out. All goes to prove that, as Mr Macandrew said. “ we have not gold -fields in this country—we have mountains of gold.” We believe that during the coming summer discoveries more important perhaps than any that have gone before will be made on this range. As Mr Sherrin pointed out in the report with which he supplemented Mr C. E. Haughton’e report to the GolomalGovernment,

at present tbe reef workings are mostly confined to a single spur in the midst of a long range of hills of similar formation, and even that has never been thoroughly prospected. There is therefore every reason for the belief that further back, in localities hardly yet penetrated, much less prospected, reefs erist of quite as payable a nature as those already discovered.

At Bendigo, reefing matters look brighter at the present time than has been the case for the iast two years. There is a tendency on tbe p.irt of the miners there to give some of the old claims another trial, by means of the tribute system ; and this augurs well for the existence of a belief in their payableness. The recent discovery in the Aurora claim of what is supposed to be the original reef will help to foster this tendency, and possibly will aid in giving it practical effect as regard* other old claims. The same paper has the following notice of the discovery of a new reef on the upper part of 'the Garrick range, ab >ut half a mile distant from the old JKoyal Standard claim : The stone found on the surface is said to be thickly impregnated with gold, and some spe imens crushed in a mortar yielded a prospect equal to three ounces per ton.