THE CAPE.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 540, 3 July 1869, Page 4

THE CAPE.

(From the Melbourne Argus, June 12.) The Nightingale, which left here in February last with a number of diggers desirous of trying the South African gold fields, returned to port yesterday with about ninety passengers. On the 6th of May the following paragraph appeared in the Natal Herald:— "We may look for the Nightingale leaving to-morrow or Saturday for Melbourne, with seventy or eighty souls on board. We must certainly wish them a safe voyage. Most of the passengers are miners, returning with blighted hopes of realising a large fortune from the published reports of the South African gold fields." It appears that up to that time very little was known of the reputed gold fields. No payable ground had been opened up, and some of the miners who had arrived by the Nightingale were endeavoring to get up a prospecting company, and with that view had held a public meeting at Durban. The idea was that the expenses of prospecting should be borne by the towns-people, but no definite conclusion was arrived at. We take the following from a letter addressed by Mr L. W. Odell to the Rev. Mr Ludorf, of Durban, and published in the Natal Berald of the 15th April :— "Tatin River, January 19. "My dear Mr Ludorf, — I take this opportunity of sending you a few lines, as we hear a waggon wUI be here in a day or two. I dare say you have been on the look-out for one ere this. We arrived all well on the 29th December, towards the evening, and not far from the working. 1 immediately went down one hole, about j fourteen or fifteen feet deep, to examine \ it ; but it presented no appearance of being ; a golden hole. Indeed,"! was somewhat : disappointed, although 1 was on the lookout for a change of country along the way, but for 200 miles 1 saw none to indicate ; to me that we were near payable gold : fields. The country all along is too flat ' and sandy ; the rivers are full of coarse : sand, and the country in general, as far , as I saw, bearing too many marks of the : ravages of the sea to find much gold. Ii have been to the mount upon which five; ovens or furnaces have been erected by ; the natives. They are enclosed in a wall that has been built around them, I think for protection. The enclosure is* about fifty or sixty yards across ; the walls about four feet thick and about five feet or more high ; the stones are laid in an ornamental fashion inside, and bear the appearance of pictures. The ovens appear to be built round, of about five feet across, and of a conical shape, and have evidently been used for smelting iron, as the clinkers indicated that were lying round about. They were dark stones, very light and [ porous, somewhat like a sponge. I have seen and examined all the workings — both I the alluvial and the quartz reefs, as they are called. The alluvial diggings up to the present are worthless ; there is nothing but a speck or two of gold to be got in them. About four mile 3or so from here there are other native workings through; quartz, I believe five in number, and at these there are two stones I saw with holes in them which were shown me by one of the diggers as having been used for crushing the quartz. They had holes in them about five or six inches deep, and the same across, with stones to fit, and, I. believe, were used for that purpose. One of these workings was about eighteen or twenty yards across, and about twenty feet deep. I went with Mr Todd to sink it a little deeper, to see if they had gone through a reef. We sunk about six feet,

and could find no trace of it. I think it is a mistaken notion to think the natives do not know how to extract gold from quartz. lam given to understand that there are in this part of the country more or less old workings of the quartz veins. I have been down and examined Mr Black's hole, which, up to the present time has been the best — and took a friend with me. We knocked up about 2541 b. of the very best quartz we could find, which, when crushed, and washed, yielded about half a pepny weight. The Greytown party, consisting of three men, crushed and washed about 5001 b., and got 18gra.; they tried again, and washed nearly half a ton, and it yielded about l|dw*i You will be surprised at this, and wonder where have all those rich specimens come from. I also could send you a little specimen, which, I think, if sent for trial, would yield per ton 600oz. j but, remember, in searching these old workings, you may look for days before you can find dne with a speck of gold in it, and break, it may be, 500 or 1000 pieces before you can get it. Mr Black sunk about forty-eight or fifty feet through the schistose rock and through the quartz veins; these veins are about four and twenty inches broad, and if you could average one ounce per ton it would not pay Europeans to work it; there is so much labor to throw away in cutting away the other reefs that my friend and I could not see how he could, on an average, get more than 3cwt. per day each man. A great deal of the quarts is not gold-bearing at all, there is such a quanty of the white alabaster marble appearance about it; plenty of this can be found, but it is of no value. There are large quantities of ironstone, about here and traces of copper." We (Argus) have papers from the Cape 1 of Good Hope to the 20th Aprik An injunction had been obtained against the Messrs Lilienfeld, to prevent their Belling the large diamond, which, it will be > remembered, they had purchased for the sum of L 11,200, on the ground that it was discovered in a portion of the chief Waterboer's territory, all the gems and precious stones on which he had sold to a company, in consideration of the payment of a certain royalty. Referring to this matter, the Cape Argus, of April 17, says :— " The big diamond is still making sport for the lawyers. Last week we published an interdict restraining Messrs Lilienfeld from disposing of it, together with a solemn proclamation from the great chief Waterboer, disclosing a not very creditable compact with a few colonial adventurers. We now hear that the genuine, discoverer of the diamond has been found, and that he solemnly swears he found the diamond on the colonial side of the Orange River. The lawyers on either side have, of course, pressed their impartial views upon the simple-minded individual, but he adheres to the declaration that he found the gem within the colonial boundary. If so, the interdict granted by Mr Justice Cole will soon be quashed, and the rights of Messrs Lilienfeld established." The same paper of April 20 says :— " Mr William O'Rielly, who arrived in Colesberg on Friday afternoon from the interior, reports that nine diamonds were seen by him in Hope Town, and five in the possession of Jantje, a Kaffir chief, residing at Lequatling. The Colesberg Advertiser reports : — 'The magnificent diamond which our readers will recollect was purchased by Messrs Lilienfeld Brothers from Mr Van Niekerk, who bought it from a Hottentot, turns out not to be the stone which has been so long in the possession of the Kaffir doctor.' Mr Louis Hond writes, under date Hope Town, 9th April, 1869, as follows :—' Mr Emile Hoffa has this -week brought in three diamonds, of which one weighs ten and a half carats, another four and a half, and the third one and three quarter carats. Mr Steyn, a trader, brought in a small diamond weighing two carats, and Mr Jacob Naude has brought two diamonds, weighing two and three-quarter carats and one carat respectively. It seems as if these gentlemen hesitate to state where the above-mentioned stones were .found, iiince an embargo has been laid on the splendid diamond weighing eighty-three and a half carats, at present the property of Messrs Lilienfeld Brothers.'"