UNKNOWN

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 397, 28 August 1889, Page 2

UNKNOWN

trter t °. l^ e Melbourne, The special re^ follow '^ graphic deLeader, gives the 'ondln " ul Q«~n.land scr.ption of the rallya quarry of gold goldmine :-It is lite; ao JiatBJ iat8 to say how it which puzzleß the gee u | h s\ irrounded .»y got there; and, altho £pcp ca ra ace ' out + s^! similar mountains in i Vthe ra n &*™* the of this particular peak i fc >as hitherto colour of the precious 1 \ofhos, f -so* e °S« r rewarded the eager searcl -y a t Wt wk ! ° ™* c prospectors, who are busil r g an x tendeds, hope of floating Mount Mo t Morgan.a n . Sou " n Mount Morgan Puns, Moun . w j^ I* 5 P™" South, East West, 'and Non o f i " ltish bably we shall hear, by and <iBhi 8 h pp c r ' r6 j Mount Morgans, as an Engi v S) j B en g t ed cently a visitor to these colonit don to t U . r ~ in forming 1 a company in Lon e8) p, a p a l 'f" chase all the sui rounding leas ' ftD( | (j ev *P tory to entering upon ftlaboratt an t f orm prospecting operations. The mo a nanow part of a range which rises from \long its valley, having a creek running it joins I bed to a point lower down, where "erDee. l\ a considerable stream called the Rrv , VQ j o f The mount is 1200 feet above the U Q c the sea and 500 above the creek i o f valley along which is the townshi foft. Mount Morgan, containing 6000 inh . geg ants. This township with its tents, hou stores, and hotels, has all the surround i. «j^_ of a large mining rush in the early of "V torian mining, and it is difficult at first 9 j realise that it has to do only with one mm >, c Extended up the first slope at the foot o the mount begin the company's works, comprising several acres of long chimneytopped buildings, whose roofs are covered with fine chocolate coloured dust arising from the powdered or© floating everywhere in the vicinity of the works, from which an overwhelming din of scores of stone crushing machines and ore grinding mille unceasingly issues. From the works an aerial wire rope communicates with the top of the mount, and in this economical way the ore is brought down ; the full hutches pulling' the empty ones back. Climbing to the top of the hill we find the men have cut a shelf or terrace in the sido of the hill near the summit, the face o£ which is 35 feet, and the floor on to which the ore is being blasted, from the face about 9 acres in area. Seven men in the face do all the breaking down required, but on the floor of the quarry ovor 60 men are tongaged with hamnieru in breaking the lumps of stone into spnwlp, filling the hutches unrl sondi-ag them clown to the works. Tho loose stones examined among the grass on the top of the hill round the edgos nt the quarry are Bimply brown pieces, ot irojj-

,, — _ J''' < stone to look at, aind<the"ordin«ry miner,, used to the conventional gpld indications,, would never suspect them of being auriferous, and .yet we are assured. by Mr Wesley Hall, who has become' experienced^ in tho gold yielding capacity , of the various samples of stone by their appearance, that this is 2^oz ore, that 4oz,'Hhis 6oz, that 120z f this' piece, will 1 ago 30oz, another lOOoz, and one piece was shown to n* a part .of which had assayed up to 450i»z, to the ton. A peculiarity of the ore h that no matter how rich it may be yon cannot see the gold 'in it: The theory of Mr Jack, the Queensland geologist, is that the- . gold in Moaut Morgan ww upheaved from, a deep underground, bed- of. py rites- ihy~ means of a thermal Bpring, the fineness of the gold as .now found in the ironstone bein? the result of the action of tho hot geyser which brought it to the surface, The process by which the go!d is being extracted at Mdunt- Morgan is most 'effective, but no tedious and expensive that »t cou d not pay but for the exceptional richness of the ovo. As the hutches, full' af Rpawls, come down from.the quarry on th-e mount, the oreisfed into an army of Htcvne crushing machines, which reduce it to pieces of about one inch in diameter. These are then spread on drying kilns to prepare the ore for the rolling mills. In addition to the iron the ore also contains a portion of sulphides, which, without dry* ing, produces pasting in the rolls* Therolls get the ore down very fine* when it: is past in charges of one ton each into roasting furnaces, where it remains threehours for the purpose of ridding it of thewaters of crystallisation. The charges are then drawn into the cooling floors, and thence fed into the chlorination banrels at at the rate of 16cwt. to each barrel,. together with 70 gallons of water, from 1£ to 2 per cent of chloride of lime, and about the same of sulphuric acid: Thesebarrels are made to revolve between twoor three hours at the rate of eight re* volutions per minute, during which the chloride of lime and the acid generate chlorine gas,and in turn impregnates every particle of the charge and dissolves the gold. The barrels are- then discharged intothe leaching vats underneath, which hold from two to three tons of this pulp each, and into these vats water is poured and allowed to drain off into a series of charcoal filters until by chemical test the water shows no signs of gold. Charcoal has such an affinity for chlorine, which has now combined with the gold,, that, it is taken up in the filters,an& the charcoal charged with the gold U roasted in *. reverberatory furnace until nothing is, left but a grey coloured ash. This goldcharged ash is mixed with fused borax, smelted and run into ingots of from 250 to 300 oz. each. It witt be easily understood from this outline of the chlorine procesa that it takes a Mount Morgan mine to mate it pay. Mr Wesley Hall informed me that one great difficulty he had was in the grading of his ore, as anything beyond 5 or., to the ton could not be worked in the chlorine barrels* He had therefore to arrange by mixing his 1£ oz. or 2*025. stuff with the richer ores running up to 30 oz, so as to keep the charges in the barrels as closely as possible to 5 oz. per ton. At this rate the mine is just now turning out £128,000 per month. Of this £28,000 per - month go in working expenses, and the* - balance of £100,000 pays a dividend of 2-j per month per share, there being 1,000,000 shares iv tho company. The company originally started with a capital of £1,000,000, and the shares at their present value of £9 thus represents the mine as being value for £9,000,000 iterling. Some time ago a Mount Morgan boom set in, when the shares went up to £117, and as easy terras were given, and some of the banks advanced to the. extent of LtO, a large business was done. Noir that the price has gone back to £9 there has set in bad times for nrnny, especially in Rock-* harapton. Mr Wesley Hall ib urged to, increase the output and so increase the monthly dividends, but he says- he, has got to the end of his tether. He is prepared to get out LlOO.OOO a month clear, but lays he cannot do more. With respect to the future of the mine, a shaft has been - aunlc down the centre of the Mount for 300 f eet,and tested by tunnels run into the shaft at the bottom and at intervals on the way to the top. It is announced that an area of 9 acres round this 300 feet shaft is as rich as the quarry now being worked at the top, but the buyers at £17 still growl,, and ask what good this is to them if they cannot get more than 2s a month on their shares. However, the majority of the shares are in the hands of a few of the early holders, and 2« a month gives thera incomes almost beyond the dream of avarice. One gentleman was pointed out to me in Brisbane who draws £400,000 a year, and a member of the Queensland Government, who modestly described himself to me as one of the smallest of the big hoideva, confessed to receiving 'only* £12.400 a month. A million shares enabled the early promoters to divide among themselves scrip by the 100,000, and probably the buyers at £17 did not carefully enough consider what a million shares mean, and what a quantity of gold it requires to find its way round such a list in. the shape of dividends.