HOKITIKA RIVER DREDGING COMPANY.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 31 December 1901, Page 4

HOKITIKA RIVER DREDGING COMPANY.

The second annual meeting of the Hokitika Eiver Company was held at Christchurch last Monday. The report previously published was read and adopted.

The chairman said that he had recently visited the Coast, and had seen the dredge which was doing satisfactory, work, although the percentage of wash being lifted, owing to its hard nature, was small. She had been working for seven weeks, and he and others estimated the total amount of wash treated for that period was not more than one thousand cubic yards. Whilst working along the Eanieri side of the river she was bottom, ing at 25 feet, but going out towards midstream she went down to 88 feet on a valueless sandstone bottom. Ho (Mr King) had got the dredgemaster to reduce the width of the face. from one chain to half a chain, and to continue along- the bank. The indications were that the wash was of a very excellent qua’ity. From the thousand cubic yards treated practi-' cally 200ozs of gold had been obtained. 80 tight was the wash that Mr E. Blake who had visited the claim at bis (Mr King’s) request, bad advised dynamiting i*, and this would be done. From the nature of the gold obtained Mr Blake gave it as his opinion that the dredge was on the old Kanteri lead, and it was intended to follow it into the bank as far as possib'e. When he (Mr King) saw the dredge she was between one hundred and two hundred yards from the place where the previous dredge had obtained rich returns, and they hoped soon to strike some richer wash than they had got up to the present. The dredge had costthem a lot of money, but she was, he believed, the best dredge in the colony, and what was more she was worth every shilling she cost. The workmanship was good, AAd if any dredge could treat the wash MSgountered she was that dredge. The m|SHune shows no sign of wear, and appay® ly (he would not be liable fora considerable time to require any expenditure upon her. The gold obtained would be devoted to redeeming the debentures. Considering the time lost in removing from the buckets the large stones brought ue, and the small quantity of wash treated the dredge had done very well.