NOTES FROM NELSON.

Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 267, 3 April 1886, Page 4

NOTES FROM NELSON.

(FKOM ouk own correspondent.) We are told in holy scripture that " hope deferred lnaketh the heart sick." The directors and shareholders of the Champion Copper mine have every reason to acknowledge the truth of that text. Delays are to be looked for in nny mining enterprise where machinery has to he erected in a rough country; and in this case there were more than common obstacles to surmount. However, the company, w th a courage which did them credit, spared no cost to have the work pushed on with the utrnosi vigor, and the appointment of a £I2OO a-year manager with American experience, was considered equal to twice the cost in the hoped for expenditure and smartness with which preparations were to be hurried on with a view ot an early declaration of the first div. So that, when a lew weeks ago the water-jacket smelter was declared fit for work, and about the same time a discovery of a large body of rich ore had been struck in the workings, there was a feeling of satisfaction among the shareholders ; and as the stone had to be roasted before being smelted there was, not unnaturally, a little impatience displayed at the reported delays, until at last the welcome news came that the furnace was at work at last. But not for long; the same night the fires had to be extinguished; the published reports stating " because the ore was too rich," and it would require a mixture of poorer stone to enable it to part with the metal. This is very discouragiug ; but rumour has it that there are other matters in connection w;th this business which have something to do with the stopping of the furnace, and with the management, which would be all the better of a little veutilation. It is customary in some mines for secrecy as to the prospects to be insisted on among the employees. In this mine it is carried to extremes. The men are distinctly told they must not give information as to the work, under pain of dismissal. So that the public are to a great extent in the dark as to the real state of things there. But a very silort visit to the site discloses a good deal of evidence as to the slipshod nature ot the work done there; the en ginecring talent is about on a par with that displayed by the Borough Council ol the city of Nelson, which is equivalent to saying, it coukrut be much worse. 1 will mention a few items which only require the intelligence of an ordinary miner to understand what sort of handy men they have at the Champion mine. They have a tramway on the work; the grading of it seems to have been done in a haphazard sort of a way, for it is so uneven that it leads one to the conclusion that neither a level nor bowling rods were known to the individual who laid it out; but bad as the grading is, it is perfection when compared with the tramway itself. This is constructed with wooden rails, which seem to have been cut out of any sort of timber which grew handy, and laid on sleepers with wedge notches cut in. I have seen numbers of trams of this description capable of a j;ood deal of traffic, but they were laid 011 a good solid and even formation, the rails were of hard wood, and the wedges properly fitted. This affair is evidently the work of an amateur in platelaying, for on sharp curves he canted the inner rail instead of the outer one, and the trucks naturally left the road finding a resting place for themselves and their contents in a gully some hundreds of teet below the line. Then, there are curves which are so sharp that no rolling stock yet invented could get round the corners and keep on the track; but the most surpassing innovation is, that the wedges are driven inside the rails instead of outside, to offer greater facilities for the trucks discharging themselves into the aforesaid gully I suppose. There are some other noyel features about this line which seem strange to one accustomed to work designed by English engineers, but one lives and learns, and the launching of trucks and their contents into an abyss may be one of the preliminary methods of displaying Yankee smartness. Any sailor, and any man who has worked about mines where ropes are necessary, knows that in uncoiling a new rope there is a right way and a wrong way to go to work ; if the wrong way is adopted a " kink " is fonned for every turn the rope has on a coil. This means a loss of time with an ordinary rope, but with a wire rope it means not only loss of time, but destruction of the rope as well. Well, the company sent some coils of wire rope to the mine for use on the incline, and the manager had one end fastened to the axle of a dray and the horse was driven along the road to uncoil this wire rope, and the result can be imagined; every yard or two there was a "half-crown" in that rope, and if it is not the cause of some more trucks finding their way to the abyss when it comes into service, then I don't know anything about wire ropes. But the " water-jacket furnace " beats everything 1 This Yankee manager knows all about it, and also about high grade ore. and low grade ores, and analysis, and fluxes, and laboratory work, and I could'nt say how many more scientific things. Yet the first day he starts the boiling-down plant he gets it " gobbed." That is the technical term for choking a blast furnace. The reason published in the Slop Bucket as to the ore being " too rich " does not refer to the stone, but to the gullibility of the shareholders and their faith in the American system of extracting metal. I believe it will b necessary to dynamite the metal out, and t;ike out the fire-brick casing and build t afresh, before they can issue any more bulletins about their stone being " 100 rich."

Korari