Page:Downey•Quartz·Reefs·West·Coast•1928.pdf/106

 adit already referred to; No. 2 level was driven upwards of 200 ft. north and about 400 ft. south; No. 3 level was driven 550 ft. north and 400 ft. south. In these last two workings gold-bearing shoots corresponding with those met with in the adit were located. On both levels, however, the northern shoot was found too short and poor to pay for working, but the southern shoot was stoped up to the adit. Occasional splashes of rich quartz were met, but on the whole the stone was very low grade. In all, some 4,483 tons of quartz were crushed, for a yield of 1,675 oz. 8 dwt. gold, valued at £7,504 13s. 4d., an average of 7·46 dwt. or £1 11s. 3d. per ton.

All this work was not done by the Millerton Gold-mining Company. That company had exhausted its capital by 1914, when it suspended operations, and the claims lay idle till 1920, when they passed to the New Millerton Mines, Ltd., a subsidiary of Reefton Gold-mines, Ltd. This company did most of the development on No. 3 level, erected the battery, and did all the crushing; but, as it could not work the mine profitably, it also ceased work in 1924. Since then a little fruitless prospecting has been done on what is known as the Anzac section of the property, immediately south of Snowy Creek, but no attempt has been made to reopen the main workings.

In the present writer’s opinion the mine is not worthy of any further trial. At the time Dr. Henderson inspected the mine, when preparing his geological survey of the district, the adit previously referred to and a shaft sunk on the outcrop, from which a drive had been put out to the lode, represented all the mining done; but he noted then that the reef-track in the latter was strongly suggestive of a lode faulted along its strike. The work done on Nos. 2 and 3 levels from the main shaft showed that this judgment was well founded, as the whole appearance of the lode for the full length of these workings was that of a lode faulted in the way mentioned. More or less quartz was to be found all along the levels, but it was mixed with pug and was all badly crushed. Near the north end of No. 3 level a cross-fault cut the track off, and it was not located again.

Northward of the New Millerton Company’s areas, and along the same general lode-line, indications of reef were got in several prospecting claims, notably Saraty’s and O’Connor’s, but in both of them the stone was much crushed and the shoots did not seem to live far in any direction. On some of these areas further investigation may, however, be justified.

This series lay to the north of Anderson’s series, and between it and the Boatman’s Groups, a short distance northerly from Reefton. At least four claims on it—the Gladstone, Sir Charles Russell, Dillon, and Ulster—were found to contain auriferous outcrops, but, although much work was done on them, the results were in all cases unsatisfactory.

Gladstone—Sir Charles Russell Mine.—Gold-bearing quartz appears to have been discovered in the Painkiller locality probably as early as the “seventies,” and a certain amount of prospecting was done about the period, but nothing of an encouraging nature was evidently found. In the early “eighties” a company known as the Gladstone took up one of the old prospected areas and did some further work on it, evidently with no better result, and in 1886 the company became defunct. Three years later an outcrop not seen by previous prospectors was located just outside the