THE VANGUARD.

Thames Star, Volume IIII, Issue 1745, 6 August 1874, Page 2

THE VANGUARD.

The contractors are making splendid progess in sinking the above company's shaft, having gone down with it for about thirty-six feet in little over seven days, and timbered up from nearly the bottom. The total depth of the shaft (from the brace) is approximated at sixty feet, that would allow twenty-four feet from the depth the contractors started on the job. The country being sunk through is most easily worked—to use an old mining expression, the pick can be sent in up to the eye. The shaftings as they come to surface present little or no lumps, the stuff being all small dirt; it has the appearance, of decomposed, or Half-formed gritty sandstone, of a blueish color; and seemed to me as though at some early date to have been washed off the cap of a bed rock, and accumulated where the shaft is being sunk; probably a- ledge of harder rock nearer the flat has kept it back from travelling further down, it is certain that with a few hundred feet towards the beach, shelly quick-drift would have been met with. The shaft 1 is, so to speak, dry; the stuff sent up from it is damp, perhaps a litle surface water may cause this.