BIG BAY PROSPECTING EXPEDITION.

Kumara Times, Issue 3133, 18 November 1886, Page 3

BIG BAY PROSPECTING EXPE—DITION.

The special correspondent of the Christchurch Press writes as follow's:— Big Bay, September 26.

The Big Bay prospectors, about 150 in number, are camped on a narrow flat, about a mile from the mouth of the Awarna River. They landed on the 22nd inst., and their time since has been chiefly occupied in getting their stores safely housed on the camping ground. The country is very rough and broken, such of the stratified rocks as are exposed being tilted to an almost vertical position. The beach is covered with immense boulders which render walking impossible. You have to get along by a series of ftog like leaps from boulder top to boulder top, and to do this with a hag of potatoes on your shoulders is by no means an easy task. Yet, this is but preliminary to still more arduous work. Above the beach is a slightly rising flat about 600 yards in breadth, covered with dense scrub. Then we have a mountain range, high, precipitous, and heavily timbered, quite impracticable without tracks. Indeed, track-cutting I reckon the first work of the prospec'ois. The pot holes between the boulders on the beach have been industriously “ fossicked ” and their contents washed out. A little gold has been found. It is a fair sample of rough gold, but it is allege; her too scarce to he considered in the least degree payable. October 5. Piospecting has been going forward briskly during the past week. Holes have been sunk on flats, terraces and gullies, and these have been “ bottomed ” wherever possible, with the tesnlt that scarcely a colour has been found. The only gold found in the neighborhood of Big Bay is contained in a thin fringe of wash-dirt on t he bench. Along the line of high-water mark the ground has been pegged off, and large numbers have set in to work. The wash-dirt, found under and between the huge boulders, with which the beach is strewn, is obtained with extreme difficulty, and hitherto has been small in quantity and poor in quality, None of the claims, as far as I have been aide to ascertain, are yielding “ tucker.” A party of three, men have just washed op, after a week’s hard work, with the magnificent result of a little over Sdwts. of gold. Tin ir claim is, 1 believe, a fairly average one. Mo.-t of the claims have been already abandoned, and many of the miners are leaving the place. While a few have gone south byway of Martin’s Boy, the bulk of those leaving here are pushing their way northwards in the direction of George River, the vicinity of which will become the chief centre of future prospecting operations. A general feeling prevails here that Jackson’s Bay ought to have been selected as the point of debarkation for the Hinemoa’s passengers. They would there have had regular means of communication with the outer world. Supplies could have been easily obtained. A less quantity of stores would have sufficed in the first instance, and the mineus would have found themselves in a known gold country, with a!! sooth o: them open lor prospecting. [UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION 7 .] Dunedin, November 12. A letter has la-en received in Dunedin f'om one of the Big Bay prospectors. He complains of the Stella having gone past on fine days without calling in to see if any assistance was required. The writer states that very little gold is being got, but the prospectors expect to stiike a lead anv moment, and are hopeful of a payable field being found.

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