PROSPECTING.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1227, 10 November 1874, Page 4

PROSPECTING.

A preliminary meeting has been held at Charleston to consider ways and means for fitting out a prospecting party to test the existence of payable gold in the Yalley of the Four Mile Creek. The Charleston Herald says : Some four years ago a party who were prospecting up that river obtained about fourteen pennyweights of coarse gold of a totally different description to that found on other portions of the field. But no organised effort to discover whether the precious metal existed in payable quantities in that locality or not has ever "been made, though from time to time solitary prospectors have obtained indications, which, perhaps from over cautiousness or unwillingness to come to the terms sought to be imposed by prospectors, as a condition of testing the country, has been productive of no good results. The belief that coarse payable gold does exist up the Four Mile river has found favor with many old mining residents, and that they have not acted on such belief is owing to the fact that their circumstances debarred them from devoting their time and money to set the question at rest by thoroughly prospecting the valley. During the past week the existence of gold up the river has again been brought before the public by two miners—both old residents—exhibiting a small sample which they had procured some ten miles above the Four Mile bridge, the gold being found in a gravelly wash, and what is generally known as scaly gold, but of fair thickness. The men Messrs Ireland and King both express themselves as convinced that a run of payable gold exists there over a large extent of country, from which they obtained prospects in every pbee they tried, and with only rude appliances.