COLLINGWOOD

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 364, 19 April 1861, Page 3

COLLINGWOOD

[FROM OUR OWN CORUESrONDEN'T.] April 14th, 1861. You will be glad to hear the continual good accounts of the new gold district lately opened up by Carruthers Fiid Co., at the gully bearing their name : they now make no secret of the value of their leasehold, freely showing you their returns —a beautiful clear bright gold, and yielding in profusion ; it is of a fine nature mixed with some black sand. The face they have opened shows the rock dipping very suddenly, leaving a brown sandy deposit, through which the gold lies indiscriminately. They are working it by a ground sluice, and are short of water; they will finish their new race to-day, which will secure them two ground sluice-heads or twenty-four inches of water. They have begun to employ extra labor. Since their block was laid out three additional parties have applied for the rest of the spur and those immediately adjoining. William Lightband has secured •twenty acres and two ground sluice heads of water; Pagett and Jones four acres and one ground sluice; another five acres and two ground sluices. There is more ground in the neighborhood which is doubtless of the same valuable character; it is within eight miles of the town.

I understand Lightband's Gully Company are anxious for another party to work their claims in Lightband's gully. I have been up into Victoria gully, in the Whakamarinarange; there is good gold getting there ; some of the creeks abound with a. new description of metal, understood to be tin : 1 have some parties procuring a large sample to enable it to be well tested; some has been tested, but the quantity was too small to be safely pronounced upon. The first quartz-crushing machine has arrived here for the Collingwood Company (not the Nelson) to test the quartz on their block at Bedstead gully satisfactorily. This is going steadily on; their drive is near 90 feet into the saddle. After driving in various directions they still find the quartz reef all round them. A short time now and the value will be fully shown; should it prove successful, this pulverising machine must give way to a larger and more powerful one. In the drive now going on the miners have struck three distinct leads of gold, Many more diggers have gone up the Aorere valley to the Quartz ranges. The valley road must be opened up further to enable the diggers to develope the resources now lying dormant there. The district evidently abounds with other precious minerals as well as gold; and a knowledge of the localities must be obtained shortly, if not at once. There are numerous likely places which can only be reached by the valley. A new lease has been taken out for the Doctor's creek flat, in the same line exactly as Carruthers's gully, about half-a-mile to the westward. I trust that this district has gone through its worst ordeal of privations and trials, and that good times are coming fast. The diggers are becoming more content and are more comfortably settled in all parts. Some of the parties who left here some two years ago would scarcely recognise many of the old diggings.