The Mokau Coalfields.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 141, 20 May 1885, Page 2

The Mokau Coalfields.

. Chronicle. A gentleman who has had large experience m coal mining, and who has just returned from a visit of inspection to tho Mokau, has kindly furnished us with the following particulars of the coal seams discovered m that district, and the means of gaining access to them :— The entrance to the Mokau is a narrow channel bending into a sharp angle from east to north about 750 degrees, bounded on the south by a hard rock lft above low water, and the north by shifting sand, forming a sandspit at the elbow, leaving a channel m fine weather and low tide only abont 40ft wide and 4ft to 18ft deep. The river is very winding, with an average depth of 18ft after pas-. sins: the mud flat at Mahoo, about a mile and a half from the Heads. This depth continues to Mangaturoa Rapid, a distance of about 21 urifos. At this rapid the current runs about four to five miles at half ebb. This is no great inconvenience to navigation, as the spring tide rises nearly 6ft, but here the drift wood commences and obstructs the navigation during five months m the year. At 16 miles from the heads coal can be got by sinking about 100 ft or 120 ft at the river side. This will be found to be the thickest part of the seams, about 20ft, the seama gradually thinniug towards fast and north, following the river to a creek known as Mangaoneone. Here the coal rises to the level of the river, and can be mined by means ot drives without any machinery, and as the coal crops out at the river bank this should be one of the easiest worked coal mines m New Zealand, as the seam has a declination of lft m 2ft, about .sOdeg. south by weßt. The coal is a pitch coal with about '56 fixed carbon. Four different seams have beeu discovered, varying from 2ft 6ih to lift, where visible, one of them being seini-bituminouß. The extent of the coalfield I have estimated at about four hundred million tons, or sufficient to supply New Zealand at the present rate of consumption—which is nearly five hundred thousand tons a year—for & period of over a thousand years.