GOLD FROM COROMANDEL Splendid Returns by Private Parties

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 200, 23 April 1887, Page 1

GOLD FROM COROMANDEL Splendid Returns by Private Parties

Reference has again and again been nvede to the richness of the unprospected por tion of the Coromandel peninsula as an auriferous county, and it is to be hoped that before the Minister of Mines leaves this part of the colony an effort will be made to induce him to place upon the estimates a sum of money for the encouragement of prospecting. Several hundred pounds spent in this way and making tracks would probably have fche effect ofleading to finds that would absorb the whole of our unemployed population, and engage them in remunerative employment. Little has been heard for some time of goldmining work at Coromandel, but we believe that a great deal of gold has lately been won from this district, and soveral private parties boast of large returns. Bennett and mate, of the Tokatea mine, are in town, and banked 150ozs. of gold on Thursday night, and we are informed that since Christmas they have got £1,000 worth of gold. o 'Neil's party working in the claim on the spur over-looking Kennedy's Bay, are said to have divided between £1,500 and £1,600 since Christmas. These were old workings abandoned some time ago, and we are told that at that period a share was offered for £20 and refused. Two miners in the old Golconda's claim banked over 100 ounces recently, this being the second deposit since Christmas. McGregor and party, who have been out prospecting with Government assistance, have struok a leader on the Waikoromiki Creek, where they found rich stone on the surface. They put a small drive in and found gold, but it was evidently not the ground from which the rich etone came. They crushed 14 ounces with the pestle and mortar from 25 lbs of this picked stone. Even on the Manaia, Blackman and party are getting good gold. In the Victoria claim, the crushing ran three - quarter ounces to the ton till the claim had to be abandoned in consequence of the encroachment of water. This would appear to show that mining at Coromandel is verg profitable to private parties if not to companies. There are thousands of acres that have never been prospected, and the country is so rough as to require a track. Assistance from the <_TOvernment to proapecting parties wcmld be expenditure of a \\ ise nature, aim would probably lead to finds of great value.