QUARTZ REEFING

Hokitika Guardian, 4 June 1929, Page 2

QUARTZ REEFING

WESTLAND PROVINCE.

The Westland Province, although it has produced a wealth of gold from its alluvial deposits, has, like Marborough Province, not as yet bad the good foitune to find any 'quartz-mining field of importance. The only locality within the province from which gold has been won from quartz the neighbourhood of Ross, where, at Cedar Crock and Donnelly’s Creek, reefs were opened up and worked for a time. There are other localities however, such as the Taipo River, the Wilbcrforcc, Mount Rangitoto, and Cook’s River where auriferous reefs have been noted and more or less prospected.

CEDAR CREEK REEFS.

Auriferous quartz seems to hare been first found in the early “eighties” in this locality, which is well up the slopes of Mount Greenland, about 2,000 ft. above sea-level and nine miles from Ross by a steep mountain-track. A number of claims, known as the William Tell, Swiss Republic, All Nations, and Larnacli, were taken up, but after very little prospecting had been done all the ground was abandoned. In 1887 the William Tell Claim had some further work done on it, when quartz showing free gold was met with in an adit level driven 57ft. below the outcrop of a reef exposed in the creek. This adit was driven for 225 it. on the course of the reef, about 200 ft of the distance being on solid stone said to have been 4 ft. wide with gold fairly distributed through it. A winze was then sunk on the reef, at 76 ft. from tli western end of the adit, but the stone became broken and finally disappeared a few feet down. Another adit was driven, 85 ft. lower than No. 1, for a distance of 567 ft., where a rise was put up to connect with the bottom winze. Although the prospects were not very promising, the company that held the claim erected a battery at considrable .expense, and started to work out the quartz above the upper adit. No records are available as to the quantiy of quartz mined from here nor as to the yield of gold, but evidently the recoveries were much be low what had been anticipated, for in the samp, year (I 860) the company collapsed, and abandoned the ground after selling the battery to Mr G. Perotti, of Greymouth, who removed it to the Minerva Mine at Blackball. The Swiss Republic Mine adjoined the William Tell on the west. In 1888 a reef. 3 ft., wide at the outcrop was prospected which showed a little gold. An! adit level was driven on it for ’about 400 ft., and at 60 ft. from the portal a crosscut was put out in a southerly direction for 210 ft. In the crosscut 1 two small leaders and a reef 4 ft. in width were intersected, all of > whiclß were said to carry gold. A; winze was then started in the lode, near the portal of the edit, at a place where 1 the reef was about 2 ft. 6 in. wide - hut it was .apparently not sunk to any depth, and very little more work ’Was ever done on the claim. Simultaneously-with the carrying-on of the foregoing work in the \J£iliiafn Tell and Swiss Republic Claims, the All Nations and Ijarnach Companies whiclf held ground to east of the William Tell were engaged' \n putting out long crosscuts in their respective areas. Tile All Nations extended its crosscut for about 610 ft. in a north-easterly direction, in the course of which it cut a 0 in. reef at 34 ft., an 11 in. reef at 73 ft., and what is described ns a reef formation 14ft. wide at 364 ft. as well as a number of smaller leaders. As far as can he learned,

nono of these formations carried gold

in payable quantities. At about 270 ft further to the east, an’d nearly parallel to the All Nations crosscut, the Larnacli Company ran one out for 1000 ft., cutting on the way all the l-eefis or leaders met in the All Nation working. No payable values were found in any of them. With the collapse of the William Tell Company in 1890, and the removal of the battery, the efforts of the other companies. were paralysed and no more work appears to have been done in .the locality till 1896, when a company known as the Alpha Special Claim Syndicate took up all of old claims ,and did a littc prospecting on them'. Some quartz carrying gold values was said to have been found on the surface, and a drive was put in on it. One ton of the stone is reported to have been crushed for a yield of 4 oz. 2 dwt. gold. The adit was car-

ried in for 223 ft/ but as the reef was driven on it became very poor, and after doing some little further prospecting on the same formation at a few feet greater depth the syndicate became discouraged ,and once more the claims were abandoned. A little later a syndicate of 'Wanganui mining enthusiasts became interested in these old properties, and set a. few men a further prospecting them The William Tell old No.’ 2 adit was advanced' for some distance to the north-east without meeting anything of value, but in extending the western drive (beyond the old rise put up in 1888 by the original company a body of quartz about 8 ft. wide wals met in a short distance anil found to carry very fair gold, particularly on the hang-ing-wall side. Encouraged by this discovery, the syndicate, now known as the Mount Greenland Gold-quartz mining Company, erected a five-stamp battery, taking the necessary parts with much labour and expense up the nine-mile track from Ross. Crushimr was commenced in 1917, and was <rmt in lied in a very small way for about five years, during which time 1,939 tons of quartz were treated for a yield of 2,030 oz,.l4dwt. 6 gr. gold, value 1 at £8,107 19s 4d., equal to £4 3s 7d. j

per ton, and .CSOO was paid in dividends This return, as far as it went, was satisfactory, but it unfortunately happened that the supply of stone was strictly limited. The shoot of quartz only extended about 60 ft. in a northwesterly direction when it was cut clean off by a fault, beyond which it could not be found, and, in stoning upward, the reef was also found to disappear in a short distance. The pavstone was still going underfoot in the adit but to enable it to be mined the company was faced with the great expense of either sinking a shaft or putting in a very long tunnel at a lower level. The amount of stone to be won between levels did not promise to be nearly sufficient to warrant shaft-sink ing especially as winding plant, timber etc, could only be got to tile mine with tremendous difficulty, so any thought of doing this was set-aside. For some considerable time, however, the company seriously considered the idea of putting in a low-level tunnel at a depth of 400 ft., to 500 ft. below the old workings. There is a strip of reef-bearing country traceable in the vicinity for well over a mile, and the idea of driving an adit for upwards of 2,000 ft. along'this at depth in the hope of proving further pa.v-shoots appealed to tile, directors. The work would certainly have been a very plucky prospecting effort, hut, in view of the fact that the reef-line had been cut by numerous crosscuts for a distance of about 1,500 ft. along the route of the proposed tunnel, and surface trenched for the whole distance, without finding any pay-stone other than the short 60 ft. shoot in the far far north-west end of the old workings it could not be said that there was any evidence from past operations to justify the large expenditure the carr.vingout of the project would entail. 3ho Mines Department was invited to contribute towards the cost hut could not entertain the application : and, as. the , company was not sufficiently strong financially to undertake the .vnole enterprise, the proposal was dropped.

DONNELLY’S CREEK REEFS

The only, other quartz reefs worked to any extent in the Ross district woe in the neighbourhood of Donnelly’s Creek, at a much lower elevation than the Cedar Creek reefs, and t thm a mile or so of Ross Township. From the creek itself and from the terraces on its southern hank, a very large quantity of alluvial gold was won years ago much of it being specimens; and as gold was heavy—tire Roddy nugget of 99 oz. found there was the largest located in the Dominion -the genouJ opinion was that it had not tiavclled far, and much searching was d ne in the hope of finding the reefs or roofs from which it came. A few small reefs or leaders wove found from which ■ enishings were taken that yielded up to an ounce of gold per ton but in all cases the leaders failed to live to any distance in any dii’ection. One of these was worked in what was known as Donnelly’s Creek Mine by a man named Yanvorth, who in 1895-96 took out 299 tons, which yielded 160 oz. gold. Another was worked hv H. Osmers, who took out, between 1908 and 1910, small crushings totalling 432 tons, from which 616 oz gold was recovered. The reef was only a little over 1 ft wide and was found when followed, to come out to surface again only 40 ft below the outcrop showing that it was contained in an earth-block shifted by faulting from its original position.

FARMER. CREEK REEFS

That well-known old prospector Antonio Zala did a lot ol work on small reefs in this locaity, about four to five miles west of Ross, in the “nineties.” Two reefs, known as the Captain Russel and the Helvetia, were opened up, but they were found to be in very wet and broken country, and the quartz only occurred in blobs or boulders. Zala erected a small battery close to the reefs in 1896, and took out a crushing from the Helvetia which is said to have yielded at the rate of 15 dw. gold per ton. The results of the work being unsatisfactory, the locality was abandoned and no further prospecting has since been done there.

MOUNT RANGITOTO REEFS

In the early “seventies” attention was drawn to a small reef outcrop in an isolated belt of greywackc surround ed by granite, and probably underlain by it, immediatey south of Mount Rangitoto, in Totara Survey District about eight miles south of Ross. The reef or lode was a mixture of quartz and pyrites, with a minor amount of galena and the Mount Rangitoto Silvermining Company was formed to work it for silver. A considerable sum of money was spent in development and the erection of treatment plant. Mr W. Skey, Colonial Anayst, mentions in the Twelfth Annual Report on the Colonial Museum and Library, 1878, page 33, that two samples sent to Germany yielded silver at the rate of 17 oz. 19 dwt. and 16 oz. 6 dwt. respectively and that Professor Bickertou and Mr Isaac Lewis, had made assays which showed 69 oz. and,46 oz. silver per ton, while Professor Kirkland of the Melbourne University, is said to have obtained results from the ore equal to 735 oz. silver per ton.

The lode was, however, very narrow, and evidently only carried low average values. As seen by P. G. Morgan in 1906 the outcrop was but about Gin. wide’ and in the Mining Handbook of 1887. 1). 170. it is described as being from 3in.-1o Gin. in width but widened out at once place to 3!t. Cox, who visited the locality in 1876 or 187 G, states that its character was uniform llmim/lemi, consist,imr of pyrites, with about 20 per cent of galena, and remarked that it. not of sufficient vil-e to work ' u '" r '''' '"’id •

A sample taken by him yielded on as

say only 1 oz. 17 dwt. silver per ton. About 1876 Skey made a number of analyses of samples of the ore, taken with a view to arriving at reliable data as to the character of the lode. Nine of these assays gave resuts ranging from 7 oz 19 dwt to 45 ’ oz silver per ton. It is evident that the company had no thought hut to work the lode for its silver content, but even had the values in this metal been payable it is questionable if the very primitive plant that was erected would have saved them. This plant was described as consisting of a three-stamp hatcry an amalgamating barrel, and a few buddies; while one open roastingpan made of wrought, iron, about 16 ft> long and Bft wide, was later added to calcine the ore before crushing. 11, A. Gordon states! that on visiting the mine on one occasion he examined the tailings, and was surprised to see them full of quicksilver. On washing some in an old frying pan he collected in a short time about 201 bof quicksilver, and from 6 dwt to 8 dwt of gold alxd silver, and he judged from this that the company could never have taken a great deal of gold or silver from the ore, and whatever there was remained in the tailings. Even had a more suitable treatment plant been provided it is almost certain that such silver values as tlicio were in the ore would not have proved payable, but there is a possibility that if the company had given attention to the recovery of the geld i ather than the silver contents of the ore it might have met with a greater measure qf success. In suite of the fact tli ait "90 -tons of the ore treated at Swansea are said to have returned 2 oz gold per ton, and that assays made by Skey showed that some of tlie samples carried values up to 10 oz 2 dwt gold per ton, no special effort seems to have been made to save this metal. P. G. Morgan* states that he took a general sample from the outcrop. and one from the broken ore lying at the month of the drive, which Yielded on assay 1 oz 5 dwt 6 gr and 1 oz 3 dwt 22 gr respectively. It so happens that the lode is in freehold land and consequently cannot be investigated 'by the ordinary prospector, but in view of the gold values referred to some further testing of the formation seems worth while.

GOLD IN GRANTTE AT MOUNT

R ANGTTOTO

Tn bis annual report for 1893 Inspecting Engineer of Mines, H. A. Gordon mentions that a considerable amount of prospecting bad been done on Messrs Pollock and Bovan’s Property at Rangiloto, and that it had been represented they had obtained both gold and silver ol a payable character in working a granitic conglomerate which crumbles away on exposure to the atmosphere. He quotes the following extract from a letter addressed by these prospectors to tin* Minister of Mines: —

“You may perhaps ho aware that f,,r n Inn" lime past we have boon pro peeling a lingo licit of conglom-

crate, or a sort of bastard l 'granite, which crumbles away on 1 'exposure, and that we have found to he auriferous. We have had many trials from the, outcrop,, taken indiscriminately from an extensive surface. One trial of a ton of chlorination in Melbourne gave us 6 dwt 12-gr gold; another by the Cassel process yielded 6 dwt 14 gr. Our own (ire, assays from the face of the formation' have yielded a variety of results—some poor, some exceedingly good,--'hut encouraging from a prospector’s, point of view, owing to the fact that we seldom or never failed to get gold; although nothing is visible to the miked eye. On another occasion we sent five small lumps to Reefton. and Mr: Fenton found gold in all of them, and recommended us to further prospect the discovery.' In February last a tunnel was driven right into the formation. Tlxe tunnel was 4 ft 6 in by 6 ft 6 in. At every 3 ft of driving 12 lb of stone was taken out and tried. The tunnel was driven for a distance of 40 ft, and nine of these trials of 12 lb each were made, and in every case gold was obtained. In order to get a good all-round average the x-esults of the nine trials were cupelled and run into one button of gold, with the gratifying result that it yielded 4 dwt 4 gr gold, equal to 6 dwt 16 gr per ton. The process adopted was by quicksilver amalgamation of the ordinary character, with hut very primitive appliances at command. This mode of dealing with the stone proves that .the gold is free and docs not require either the Oassel process or chlorination to extract it; lienee the probability of making such a huge mass pay well, for it must he borne in mind that there are simply millions of tons of stuff to operate on, which could be 'broken down for a mere nominal cost, probably less than Is per ton. The gold is very fine, and will require careful treatment; but recent amalgamation-pans and intelligent battery management ought to lie sufficiently understood to make the undertaking a success.” If there was any reliability to he placed on the above description the matter should have been worth looking into, hut the writer lias not been able to find any record of any investigation. departmental or otherwise. It is evident, however, that when P. G. Morgan was engaged in carrying out the geological survey of tho Mikonui Subdivision (Bulletin No. 6) in 1905) he was aware of the report quoted, for lie made some search for the formation referred to in it. He says that he did not see any signs of mineralisation, but that if the Rangitoto lode passed from the enclosing greywacko into .the granite, as might be the case, it was not improbable that the adjoining granite might he somewhat auriferous. A sample of decomposed granite taken by him Irom another part of the mountain,' on being carefully analysed for traces of gold, gave a negative result.