MINING MEETING.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 50, 6 January 1872, Page 8

MINING MEETING.

A meeting of gentlemen representing the Morning Star, the Baker’s Hill, and the Golden Crown Mining Companies, was held on Thursday night at the offices of the former company, Mr Levy being in the chair. The only real business done, for which the meeting was convened, was the reading of the report made by Mr Walker, on behalf of the three companies, which is as follows : REPORT. To the Directors of the Morning Star, Baker’s Hill, and Golden Crown Companies. Gentlemen, ■ —Having inspected your properties, I beg leave to make the following observations: — THE MORNING Star. —This company has obtained a fair prospect of fine gold from a narrow outcrop of rubbly sandstone, mixed with thin veins of a whitish substance, teamed stillite. The gold-bearing matter has a clearly defined wall on its eastern face, and appears to increase in width downward. A low level from the creek is in a considerable distance, but has not yet reached the lode. A fourstamp mill, with turbine wheel, is in course of erection. The stamps and boxes are badly proportioned, and the cams should have two lifts on each revolution of the shaft. I recommend the addition of a fifth stamp, and that the dams he altered as above. The Baker’s Hill.— This company has also had encouraging prospects on the surface, and from their creek drive, which lias cut the gold-bearing substance some distance from the entrance. Good prospects of fine gold can occasionally be got throughout some fifteen feet of hard grey sandstone. This company has a small two-stamp testing mill. The Golden Crown. —This company has good prospects on the surface and in a drive about eighty feet below the surface. In the latter the gold is confined to a width of three feet in a jumble of decomposed sandstone, having no regular walls, but associated with stillite, carbonate of lime, and very thin lines of quartz. A Berdan machine has lately been got to make tests. Really so little have those claims been opened and explored (the lode in each having been merely crosscut),that I have no guide to their actual value. It is evident, however, that there is a distribution of gold along the course of the range for about half-a-mile ; but ■whether in payable quantities throughout must be ascertained by further exploration, and by trial crushings and careful dish prospecting as the work proceeds. By your present drives you may open up and test the lode to the creek level, and the machinery on the ground, though too small to give any profit, will, I think, be serviceable in treating your samples. You must ascertain the actual value per ton, and the width of pay rock at the points already intersected; also, the extent of payable rock along the course of the lode (S.E.), and its width at various levels, by crosscuts made at regular intervals. Having satisfactorily proved that you have an abundant supply of the raw material, an adit level of the range, which would reach the line of lode some 500 feet below the outcrop, should be driven from the eastern side. By this means your mines should be systematically and economically opened, worked, and drained, and at the adit mouth a reducing mill will be required, proportionate to the possible out-turn of your mine. Your gold is remarkably fine, and on that account, and by reason of the presence of sulphurets, may be difficult to save, either with or without the aid of quicksilver. I think, however, that with properly-constructed blanket floors and with buddies, nearly all could be collected; the matter thus concentrated to be desulphurized by slow roasting, and afterwards ground and amalgated in charges by Wheeler’s pans, or it might be tried with the Chlorine process. In extending your operations on the course of the lode, you will daily add something to your knowledge of its value and character. Although I feel Banguine of your success ultimately, I must warn you against taking anything for granted. Be positively certain that you have a mine before you rush into costly machinery.—l am, &c, J. H. Walker. The Chairman mooted a proposition to appoint a general manager to manage the whole of the works, which met with general acceptance, and it was decided that the directors of each company should be requested to discuss the matter, with a view to united action in the matter. The meeting then broke up.