OREPUKI GOLDFIELD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2892, 11 August 1909, Page 28

OREPUKI GOLDFIELD.

(Frou Our Own- Correspondent) INVERCARGILL, August 4. Some invest ijjarion of the state of a/Fairs on the Orepuki goldfield has been made by ;i .Southland Times reporter, who finch that the wave of tense excitement that recently stirred a secrion of the miners and speculators there was scarcely warranted by thp '■ circumstance. The anriferous reef that was bared seems to have raised strong anticipations of something 1 unusual, and tlnsJ appears to have inflamed the minds of some of the miners, who began to talk of dazzling offers made for some samples of black sand. A pegging-out craze, both along the reef and on the beach where the black , sand exists at once broke out. The exact | processes that fanned the fever to the heat it reached can scarcely be explained by i the bedrock facts. The reef ceitainly : .showed gold, though not to any unusual ; extent, as a recent assay has proved. The black sand has for years been thrown away as useless by miners at Orepuki, but it is

some months back since an assay made in London showed that it was worth something in platinum values. More recently a man who has interested himself in the black sand went to Orepuki, and commenced the erection of a smelter there, with the avowed intention of buying the sand from the miners and treating it on the spot. He, however, is still at work on the erection of the smelting plant, and he has not held out any hope of the sand being of extraordinary value. His proposition is that the earth has a platinum value that will enable him to pay the miner a small sum for stuff he has hitherto thrown away as useless. Of course, he expects to get a reasonable profit himself on the cost of treatmontj but in the nature of the circumstances the gain to neither miner nor smelting operator will be very striking. The position now is that the mining outlook is brighter by reason of the prospective value of the black sand, and if, when the smelter is completed, it will treat the black sand to the advantage expected, then the effect will be that Orepuki will become a much brisker field than it has been for some years. I |