GOLD MINING IN CALIFORNIA.

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 972, 7 September 1871, Page 2

GOLD MINING IN CALIFORNIA.

1 ThG ■ following account of mining iv ~G&tGriti^mnrSiaKetfVfttrTohn Manning, late of Hokitika, to Mr John Barrett of, that town, and will be found to contain much, that might be profitably turned =toY account in Westland. Mr Manning has been for some time in California, and has personally humected all the mining districts;. with ■:%S# i view of gathering information :-^-. -,,-,,. V £ The gold districts of this country are wretchedly poor- - are, indeed, , exhausted almosir— and .were' never rjcK as'compared with those of Australia or New Zealand. Still', .companies can manage to make these miserable gold fields yield 'fine* returns, notwithstanding the poverty of the ground worked and the great scarcity of water here, not a drop of rain, falling] for nine months out of the twelve. I venture to say that if a company were formed inNew Zealand to work with machinery such as is used here, a princely fortune might be realised. The mode of working alluvial ground here is by hydraulic power. I visited a claim, lately,, which, is- so worked, and I will endeavor to describe what I saw. The ground to be worked was on a iill, much like that on; which stands at Hokitdlva,' only much higher, yet have I seen, a hill of such dimensions washed out of a face ! ; A goodjftream of water is brought to the brow of the hill — the [Cemetery Bill at Hokitika, we will suppose— at; the month of the Bfream an iron pipe is placed, made of sheet-iron and ri vetted like a ship's boiler, in 2ft lengths. Each length of piping is about 12ft long, and Gin _or,7in in diameter. This piping is laid on t£e ground, down along the face of the li3i^3(JP§i«4ooft, or even a 1000 ft from, the foot of the hill, inclining in a curve towards the fape of the? hill. In fact, the piping of what may be termed an "iron horse,", stretched along the ground, just as a hose^ould be for supplying water to an engine; in extinguishing a fire. At the' mouth of the pipe a nozzle or nose is fixed, 18iu or 20in.long, made of sheet iron,: and fastened into a castriron socket, and is as much like a cannon as possible. It is so fixed at the mouth of the pipe that one man, or even a lad fourteen years old, can. 'elevate the nose with the lever that is attached to the breech or socket, so as to send the water 300 ft high, or lower the nose and direct the stream- within J a ,' few' fefef A>f him ; the nozzle, in fact, is so fixed in the socket that ie can be turned in any direction. The immense and powerful volume of water being directed against the base of the hill, a great chasm is"s|pn made (indeed it could make a drive righ% through the hill, for thai matter) aud'lthen down slip some hundreds of thousands; of tons of earth, rocks, «Sc. .On this 'great landslip is now ttirned the water-spout, which soon breaks it up, dissolving' all is solvable, and washing' it all down the tailrace. Three or four men will suffice for all this work p one man to ,direct the nozzle, and the other -Bands to cut tip trees, blast rocks, and clear away all such impediments from .the face. The man who directs the nozzle is the principal man, but lm work is merely ; pky. The company whose hydraulic^ wbrkJl visited pay LSO a week for water supplied' to them by a compaqy, who, bring. in, the water xrom a lake fitty miles off., ._, Even>at that price the hydraulic company are only able to get water for about eight months in the year, and the ground they are working ia so poor that, as the man who-wa* directh ing the .-spoujkittijd \me, ,iLl[<ra Sight pan dirt all day and wouldn't raise the color." Yet this company, who onl/Jfdrk eight months in the year, who pay idO a week for water, besides men's wag&r, can live like gentlemen from year's end to year's end. I have not been informed as to their actual returns beyond that they were very good. To carry on *fnis 'kind of work two things are indispensible : First, you must have water coming down into jth§ piping from an elevation of about 200ff^and next you must have a good fall for your tailrace, so as to carry off th« vast quantity of stuff which is washed away. from the face of the hill. The tail-race should be 4000 ft or 6000 ft long ; the ; longer it is the safer. If the stuff pui through be better than the average, tlgey clean up the tail-race once a .month, or oftener, as they want, money to go on with; if it be very poor? they clean up only once in two or three .months, and sometimes not till the end of the season. In, rich ground like that in New Zealand you might ! perhaps clean up twice a month. The water-race should be 36in •iir-diameter, T»n7ing^c%pttt"tff"2oin of water, so as to give* lOOinlof SOOin of water, more or less, from thelmuzzle, according to its si?». .;; body 6$ wat^r from aH elevatipn of '^OQft gives an im* mense power, strong enough to tear up any kind of day** gravel. I don't mean However that thir immense water pressure should fall .20itft perpendicularly into the pipes, because "snen a fqypfe would burst any iron pipes in. the. world, but the water should come sloping 4own into the pipes. By that means tie -friction t againattho«ideof the pipe weakens the pressure and reduces t&e force to 1 the pro-

poffftm required. Now let us take the „C.en*tery_Hill at Hokitika again for example. You could have your tail-race from that hill running right into the sea, and your tailings wouldn't interfere, with anyone or with any interests. There are many localities- about Westlahd that would pay a company well to work in this way. Every inch of ground about the Greenstone would pay, and thatpfor miles round. The two main things /to be considered are the elevation of thjg water and the fall for the tailings. Fshould not be surprised if before long some of these sharp Californian miners' will be out in New Zealand, when they, will introduce their machinery and be backed iip by the wealthiestand most influential men in the country, and securing the^fiittest share of the auriferous lands. The nozzle which I have described is a new invention even here. lam acquainted with' both the inventor and the founder who oasts the sockets, and when I told them#hat sort of country New Zealand is — its rivers, its watercourses, its precipitous Chilly character, and the rich auriferous quality of its soil, they said, " That is the country, for hydraulic mining." The cost <bf the nozzle and socket here is from L6O to LI 00, according to size- .The 'piping could be made , in, Melbourne or it could be sent from here. The nozzle socket, and 3000 ft of piping would coat here, from L 220 to L 240. Then there would Be the cost of carriage from%sre to San Francisco, and the freight to New Zealand. All that would actually be re- , rquired from here, hbwever, would be tLe socket, the nozzle, and one length of piping, of about 12ft for a pattern. It would be easy enough, I should think, to •! get the' piping made in New Zealand. lam living at present where all this work is going on, several hundred miles : •■■ from San Francisco: The place is called Nevada. It is a vast mountainous country, like Wood's Pointy in Victoria. It was the i greatest gold field in California in former years, and is yet the best in the country, but as compared to the gold fields in New Zealand or Australia, all of them here are, i;. aa; I have said, miserable poor. All the heavy timber was cut down years ago, when these mountains swarmed with miners, but a v 'sec6htT growth of timber has sprung up, as has been the case in Castlemaine and Bendigo, and I should suppose in J Wood's Point also by thia time. In consequence of the old forests having been thus cut down, the country does not look so wild as it otherwise ; would, v and there are permanent towns and settlements scattered among the mountains. In those settlements fruit trees oi: all kinds are grown very extensively, and also grapes, but they grow nothing else worth mentioning. , r Grain would grow >•< "amongst these mountains, and the pasturage is too sour for sheep or cattle. So : ; icthe population is chiefly dependent on the . yield of gold, directly and indirectly, and , t , . what^with the Jittle gold they get and some few other industries they pursue, they; contrive to. live comfortably ; but as a general rule they make no money, which intjeed is a commodity not to be acquired in California at the present time. Since the first rush to this country in 1849, it has never been so completely prostrated. So I have been informed by those who have been Hying here for years. There 1 are,' for instance, over four thousand houses shut up in the city of San Francisco for want of tenants, Bnme of them being warehouses and, large business places, and this, too, in the : principal streets of the city. i