RICH MINERAL DEPOSITS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 April 1920, Page 5

RICH MINERAL DEPOSITS.

IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. Seattle, January 27. Excitement in Northern British Columbia over stories of fabulously rich mineral deposits in the mineral belt near the Alaska boundary line, that causes oldtime prospectors and mining men to risk their future health, to say nothing of their lives, by "going in" through deep snow t( stake claims, is told in a telegraph despatch recciced here to-night from Anyox, B.C. Tree-tops are being shaved and hewed and used as stakes where the snow is too deep to permit the usual "discovery" stake to be sunk in the frozen ground. Shipment after shipment, of snow-shoes, dog sleds and pack saddles have arrived at Alice Arm, on Observation Inlet and at Stewart and Hydre, on the Portland canal. Buildings are being constructed as fast ids weather conditions permit, and it is common talk that the spring will see tent colonies around the new -silver camps. So many rich strikes of silver have been made in recent months on were opened for development only Jast summer that considerable correspondence has been carried on with speculators, the result being that claims hardly opened with a small tunnel have been bonded for as high as £40,000. On the famous Dolly Varden claim, it is reported, two men in one day put £2OOO worth of highgrade silver into sacks to be shipped to the smelters at Taeoma. Native silver in great gleaming slabs has been brought to Anyox for exhibition. More than 7000 tons of high grade ruby silver from tlie Dolly Varden has been shipped to Anyox smelters. At the Premier mine, said to be the biggest silver mine known to exist, tractors such as were used overseas to haul the "heavies" into action are being used as transports for the ores. This is the flrst time in the history of British Columbia that tractors have been used to earrv ore.