A NOVEL MINING PROJECT.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 894, 30 November 1871, Page 3

A NOVEL MINING PROJECT.

The following account of a new scheme of working alluvial ground may be worth quoting from the " Sacramento Reporter ":— At Murderer's Bar, on the North Fork of the American river, is a great crevice or depression in the bed-rock, known to contain vast quantities of gold. The spot was flamed and partially worked several years ago under great disadvantages, and though no sign of the bottom of the crevice was discovered, and only a small space was worked, large quantities of gold were obtained before the water broke in upon the miners. Recently some parties in that vicinity, acting" upon the idea successfully carried out by Von Schmidtin his Blossom Rock enterprise, have organised a company, called the Great Crevice Mining Company, to work out the rich lead. The intention is to sink an iron pipe sft in diameter to the necessary depth—possibly 100 ft —and to run drifts from the shaft thus made, and extract all the auriferous gravel comeatable. By this means the water can be kept out of the mine with comparative easp, and work carried on below the bed of the river with safety, cheapness, and doubtless great profit. A steam pump will be used to keep the shaft clear of water, and when the freshets commence a tight-fitting iron cap will be placed upon the tube, so as to effectually prevent the lower portion of the mine from damage during the winter months. Altogether, the contrivance is a very ingenious as well as economical one, and we doubt not will succeed, in which case the company will produce many thousands of dollars before the winter rains. If this new mining idea proves practicable —and there is every reason to believe that it will—a new source of great profit will be opened, because there are hundreds of enormously rich deposits in the beds of our rivers which can never be worked out by fluming, but which can be made to yield up their hidden treasures by the tubing process."