OUR MINES.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3447, 12 January 1880, Page 2

OUR MINES.

MOANATAIftI.

The report of the mine manager is as follows:—" Tunnel cross*cut south is now 10 feet into footwall. The country is good, containing nice quartz stringers, and mundic. This reef is 15 feet thick at right angles, and 5 feet of footwall has a more promising appearance than the upper part. The cross-cut will be pushed forward for a few weeks 1 to see Whether any droppers from footwall can be met with before starting to drive on reef. Waitemata cross-cut is now being repaired, the stoping in back of 80 feet level on No. 9, Heldt's and Wallace's reefs, having caused it to sink down 2 feet for a length of 100 feet. This work will require another week to finish and then driving will be started towards Waitemata. The stopes and drives at 80 feet and intermediate levels are producing good payable stuff, whioh is showing up very well at the battery, 40 stampers being employed in it. Point Rusiell section.—ln driving the low or creek level, the reef is three feet thick, and heavily charged with iron pyrites. This stuff is now being saved, and when a sufficient parcel has accumulated will be forwarded to the battery. During the holidays' the latter has been thoroughly overhauled, and is now working well.—l am, &0., Robert Combb." \+iM .?;

Chables Dickens, everyone knows, went to real life for nearly all, if not quite all, his characters. Even tbe most unlikely of his creatures —Miss Havisham, in Great' Expectations -had, says Truth—a proto- ' type in the flesh, who is still alive, and whose name, though not in that capacity, was brought before the public in connection with a squabble which has agitated " society " in Ventnor. This is a certain Miss Dick, who lives at Madeira Yale, a tract of land covered with gardens and villas lying; between Ventnor and Bonchurch. It is many years since she was young, and then she had a romance which did not meet with the approval of her mother. The lore affair was broken off, but the young lady accompanied the act of filial duty by a declaration that she would go to bed and never get ap again, and she kept her word. The years hare come and gone and the house hag never been swept or garnished, the garden is a*. overgrown tangle, and the eooeotrie ls'jw has spent twenty yeari between the sheets. Charles Dickens used to a t aT a t Yentnor a good deal in those « n d so unique an episode was p; o j lost upon him. ! "Man," said Victor Hugo, "was the conundrum of the Eighteenth century; women is the conundrum of the ninetieth century." An American editor adds, " We can t guess her, but will never giro her up. No, never."