Page:Downey•Quartz·Reefs·West·Coast•1928.pdf/102

 For the whole depth so far reached, the lenses, although more or less broken by minor displacements, live down fairly uniformly, and down to No. 9 level carried fairly regular values. On No. 10 level the development work showed values up to the usual standard, but when stoping was started above the level the gold content of the stone seriously decreased. As payable values are, however, going underfoot, this falling off is probably nothing to be concerned about. It has been a feature of several of the Reefton mines that zones of poor values would occur, only to be succeeded at depth by others of better values.

In the north end of the mine the pitch of the shoots or lenses was carrying them rapidly into the adjoining ground held by the North Blackwater Mines, Ltd., the small northern shoot entering the latter at about the horizon of the Blackwater No. 3 level, and the next shoot at the horizon of No. 5 level. To ensure its own mine a longer life the Blackwater Company has, within the current year (1927) purchased the North Blackwater Company’s property, and is now busily engaged in pushing its Nos. 6 to 9 levels into the latter. These workings are, however, nearly 2,000 ft. from the company’s haulage shaft, and to reach them a tremendous outlay is entailed in maintaining levels and meeting increased costs of underground transport, so that in the future it would seem that the North Blackwater shaft will have to be used as a main winding-shaft for the property. This shaft is only about 500 ft. from the boundary of the claims, but up to the present it has only been sunk to about 50 ft. below the Blackwater No. 6 level, and would, of course, have to be carried down much deeper to be of any service for haulage purposes.

Since the battery started crushing in 1908 there has been only one break in its operations, labour troubles having caused a stoppage for six months in 1912, and up to the end of 1926 the quartz crushed amounted to 690,309 tons, which yielded 329,012 oz. 12 dwt. 7 gr. gold, valued at £1,330,895 1s. 3d. and dividends to the amount of £193,742 18s. were paid out.

The mine promises to have still a good many years of productive life ahead of it, but, owing to the increasing depth of the workings and to the even more serious handicap imposed by the materially heavier costs of labour and mining supplies that followed the World War, it is not to be expected that operations can be as profitable as formerly; indeed, it is questionable if the future earnings will ever do much more than pay working-expenses.

North Blackwater Mine.—To the immediate north of the Blackwater Mine a number of claims, among which were Scott’s Special Claim, the Lord Reading, and Mills’s and Fry’s Claims, were pegged out shortly after the first discovery of the reef in Greek's Creek. No outcrops of any importance were ever found in these areas, nor did prospecting reveal any reef. About 1907 several of these claims amalgamated, and a syndicate known as Fry’s Prospecting Syndicate drove a long crosscut adit through them westerly from Coorang Creek. This adit reached a total length of about 1,120 ft., and at least six reef-tracks were cut in it, but none of them carried any solid stone. The Blackwater Mines Company also extended their No. 2 level for about 565 ft. in to the same claims without finding anything but mere reef-tracks. In both of the workings mentioned the country was much crushed. It was known, however, that the shoots of ore being developed in the Blackwater Mine were pitching into these northern areas, and would be located in them at depth, and this led, later on, to the amalgamation of all the northern claims and the formation of the North Blackwater Mines, Ltd., to provide the money for sinking a shaft to reach the shoots. It was planned at first to sink the shaft direct to at least 1,650 ft., as at that