Gold fields Intelligence.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 2, Issue 59, 17 February 1868, Page 42

Gold fields Intelligence.

THE KARAKA GOLD-FIELD,

(Ifjram the Correspondent of. the New Zealand Serai*.)

Feb. 7,1868. Somericb specimens were yesterday, brought in from a claim .called Twofinger claim, in the Waiotahi. The atone was placed on view at the shop , of Mr T. A. Hick's, in Grey-street, and attracted very general attention, tins names of the men who struck the jgold are Shaw and Gibbon.

While examining these specimens a fact came to my knowledge which I think well worth stating. Some men in-the coarse of last week brought in some blue stone (granite quartz) from a claim situate about a mile beyond what is well known to many of your readers as Mundie Reef in the Waiotahi. There was no sign of gold in the stone; but it was carefully roasted cr calcined and tested, and the testing gave a result of twenty (20) ozs. to the ton—-or a certain yield, aceprding tot the gentleman who tried the stone, of ten (10) oza. as an average yield. Of this same stone many thousands of tons have already been thrown away. The circumstance itself reminds me very forcibly of what I saw up the Karaka during a tour of the claims which I made a few days ago. . In three of the claims that I visited, there was a clearly defined and unmistakeable '* reef,” while the men working the chains were searching for leaders, leaving the reef for some one else, I

suppose, to work; I have heard it said within the last day or two that "there ase a great number of claims lying abandoned. In my rounds I saw but one abandoned claim, and although some twenty persons were said to have tried and abandoned that one claim, there is ho doubt gold in it. The reported opening of the Upper, Thames country seems to have arisen from some misunderstanding. A prospecting claim has been applied for at a place called Pnririri, about ten miles from here, and Mr Mack’ay went there yesterday to look at the ground. The prospects are not much as yet; but in any case that wjould have nothing to do with the opening up of the Ohinemuri Creek. Scanlan and Ellis’s machine has made a private trial, but is not yet at work. Gibbons’s machine will be ready in a day or two. Stone’s machine is engaged crushing stuff for the AH Nations’ claim.

4.45 p.m. The Tauranga and Enterprise are both just in. The Eterprise has come up to the landing, but the Tauranga has touched the mud bank, and is “stuck.”

(From another Correspondent)

February 8,1868. ing qualities, of these diggings; three crushing machines are now in order for working* one started on Saturday, Mr Gibbon’s will start on Monday, and another, King’s patent, will also start early. Great anxiety is felt as to the result, and which is looked forward to as either the rise or fall of the diggings.

Three natives, one a chief, arrived here, and informed some friends that they bad discovered what they knew to be anew and good reef, twelve miles up the fiver. The natives with their white friends immediately started for the hew. field, the result is expected here with some interest.