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The total] produce, therefore, taking the gold at £2 15s. per ounce, was £7,143, representing the return of work executed from July, 1863, to May, 1864. " The yield for the vein-stuff is, therefore, about 26 oz. per ton. No calls had up to this time been required to be made on the shareholders in this claim, as the first ground worked was the richest. " From the shaft nearest Driving Creek the main reef had been worked out to ' day ' in the bed of the stream, the vein being very rich as the surface was approached. It was from the outcrop of this reef that the rich specimens found in the creek must have been derived, which first attracted attention to this goldfield. The stream winds about among the outcrops of the various reefs that have been discovered, but, owing to the nature of the rock, has not formed any proper water-worn gravel or ' wash.' The rock is decomposed very freely to a red soil, which is washed down as a coating of clay on the surface. The reefs can be traced as blue bands through the red rotten rock. They are rarely more than 10 in. in width, and, as a rule, lie parallel to a mass of breccia which forms barren ground cutting off the gold to the east, for, although superficial quartz veins have been found in this breccia, they have never proved worth working. " In the main or lowest reef are waterworn quartz pebbles, mixed with the same mullock or dark clay, in which are embedded the masses of crystallized auriferous quartz. The breccia consists of angular fragments of trachyte porphyry, and other rocks, but no quartz. Embedded in the surface soil, and lying in the bed of the creek, are masses of dolerite, and a dyke of the same rock appears north of Keevin's Point, but no proper volcanic rocks have ever been met with in the underground workings when they have proved auriferous. " On the occasion of a second visit, in February, 1866, I found many more claims occupied, but still only in the vicinity of Driving Creek, and from their being chiefly among the old workings which had been abandoned for many years, no additional information was obtained. "In April, 1868, after the discovery of the richer field at Shortland, the mining operations were again restricted to the Kapanga Mine. This mine had then reached a depth of 300 ft., or nearly to the sea-level. I found that the lode at this depth had the appearance of a fissure, with a well-defined hanging or west wall, but no regular vein-stone. The quartz occurred in larger concretions than in the higher parts of the mine, and these concretions contained, in addition to the gold and iron pyrites, native arsenic and crystals of calcite. Some of the specimens from this depth were exceedingly beautiful, but the main lead ceased to be practically remunerative, owing to the scarcity of auriferous ore at this depth. " On the spurs extending from the high range [the Tokatea Range] at the head of Driving Creek, there were, in 1864, several drives and shafts on small leaders of quartz in the decomposed porphyry, which passes into what the miners term sandstone, a few fathoms below the surface. The quartz then changes from the friable crystalline texture into a compact blue variety containing a large admixture of iron-pyrites. On the surface of the spur leading to Tokatea Peak large blocks of crystalline quartz are strewn in a zigzag line, having a general north-east direction. The principal claims were Murphy's,* in which there is a drive and shaft; the Coromandel, where there is a shaft 120 ft. deep sunk in the bottom of the gully; and the Royal, in which claim a drive has been put into the spur for 150 ft., to meet a shaft sunk in the crest of the ridge. All these are excavated in the porphyritic tufa, in the hope that small leaders which cropped out on the surface would change to reefs as they increased in depth, but they did not prove successful ventures in any case. '' As all these works have been abandoned for many years, and are now inaccessible, I have stated the above facts as observed at the time, and will now proceed to the general consideration of the structure of the district from the result of a recent examination, in the course of which I crossed the range to Kennedy Bay, and returned by a different route, from Whangapoua. I also re-examined the valley of the Matawai Creek, following it up to the Tiki Diggings, which had been discovered since my previous visit to the district. " In crossing to Kennedy Bay from the old diggings at Driving Creek, I found the difficult path by which I scrambled to the top of the Tokatea Range, in 1864, now superseded by a well-cut bridle-track, the cuttings along which afforded the additional advantage of clean sections of the rocks. The general direction in which the claims have been taken up towards the top of the range is in a north-north-east line, continued from Keevin's Point through Driving Creek and on to the Tokatea Reef. This great ' blow 'of quartz, as the miners term it, strikes to the north-west, and therefore crosses the auriferous belt nearly at right-angles.t " The shafts and drives on the Tokatea Hill, and also a few of the road-cuttings which penetrate the hard rock, show it to be the same grey tufaceous sandstone, full of mundic, as at Keevin's Point and Kapanga, thus proving this rock to extend in a narrow belt from the sea-level to 1,600 ft. altitude. On the surface it is everywhere so decomposed as to be scarcely recognisable from the patches of alluvial slope deposit. The auriferous reefs are generally in the decomposed rock, and, as at Shortland, have a general direction parallel with the boundaries of the formation, or north 40° east. " The eastern descent of the range, to Kennedy Bay, is at first very steep, and, so far as could be judged from the superficial appearance of the rock, the first slope is composed of green decomposing sandstones and breccia, like the barren rocks on the east side of Driving Creek. These are

*Murphy's Hill is on the left bank of Driving Creek, at the foot of the northern part of the Success Range. The rocks belong to the Kapanga group, but in the bed of the creek to the south slates appear.—A. McK. f From Keevin's Point to Scotty's Hill and the foot of the Tokatea Range a belt of auriferous country strikes north-east, which if prolonged would be continued to the lower grounds at the head of Kennedy Bay ; but during the progress of the work of the present year I came to the conclusion that this line does not cross the main range, and that the reefs on the Tokatea and Success Ranges, and the main range as far south as the Tiki, are in a belt of country running parallel to the main range, and consequently nearly at right-angles to that ending at Keevin's Point or at Preece's Point.—A. McK.

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