QUARTZ DISCOVERIES AT SKIPPERS.

Evening Star, Issue 3857, 5 July 1875, Page 3

QUARTZ DISCOVERIES AT SKIPPERS.

After a Ung and weary period of almost absolute prostration the reefs at Skippers are beginning to look up. again. The new find at the t hosnix mine promises to outrival anything that baa ever been discovered in quartz mining in Otago as yet. The leader struck coming in from the banging wall has developed itself into a well-defined reef, and there is between ten and twelve feet of solid atone, rich in the precious metal, in fact considerably richer than anything that has ever fallen to the lot of quartz miners delving in the reefs in New Zealand. Verily the Pheenix tribntors are lueky men They have grassed a paddock of some forty tons of gold-bearing atone, snob as is seldom seen, and when I say that it will yield between fifty and sixty ou* oes to the too, if crushed by itself, 1 think that I am within the mark Rumor says that when old Peter Sorenson, the proprietor of the reef, lost the run of golden stone, it was never found again by his successors, and the present discovery is the stone that he lost. The Cromwell discoveries are thrown completely into the shade by this. < f coarse the ground is all marked out in ev*ry direction. One party of three hold amongst them something like seventy acres, and there will bo some nice rows abont it. Both quartz and alluvial mining leases appear to have been granted indiscriminately in the Upper Shotover district, and unless our sleepy Goldfields Department docs something to bring the labor clauses into operation, and give holders to understand that they must comply with the conditions of their leases, the good fortune which premises to be on the point of falling upon the district will be considerably ehr-rn of its advantages. Large leased areas are productive ef more harm than good, and there is no mistake about it that monopoly of ground in this quarter has always kept the place in the background when it should have been in the front. 1 fancy the coming summer will prove that as Skippers was the richest alluvial field ever found in Otago, so in its quartz reefs it will also be at the top of tho tree. The effect of this discovery has been most beneficial in a commercial sense, a'd desponding storekeepers aro now somewhat inclined to the belief that things will mend. So fv as I can see, 1 feel assured they can not help it. We are on the eve of a quartz mania, as sure an fate.—Lakes correspondent of ‘ Dunstan Timer.’

On Friday last we (‘ Arrow Observer’) were shown a large piece of quartz, broken from a reef which has been discovered in this neighborhood. It is really a splendid one Th* gold can be seen running right through the stone, and we have not the slight: s' doubt but that this will he another rich reef for the Arrow. A miner rejoicing in the rural, though suggestive sobriquet of “ The Flower of Wheat,” who was one of the eaily pioaeers of the district, has. daring the past week, returned from the West <" o aat, with the intention of working a quartz reef, which he discovered daring a prospecting tour through the district twelve years ago.l ,Tbo situation of the reef is in the neighborhood of Macetown. He is connected with a parly of old Arrowites at present at the West Coast, who have joined for the purpose of giving the reef a thorough trial.