Page:Downey•Quartz·Reefs·West·Coast•1928.pdf/11

 in 1885. On the discovery of the Golden Bar reef other claims were taken up in the vicinity, and a lot of prospecting by means of tunnels driven into the hillside was carried out on them, but without finding anything of a payable nature. The reefs were then neglected till towards the end of 1893, when Mr. James Wilkie and party went into one of the old adits on the Empire City Claim, which adjourned the Golden Bar on the north, and found there a quartz reef that had been cut through by the earlier prospectors and left by them as unpayable. Wilkie’s party did some driving on this reef, which was 8 ft. in width between well-defined walls. They found that it carried a little gold and some scheelite, and were so hopeful of the prospect that they erected a small Otis crushing plant to treat the stone. No records are available as to the amount of quartz crushed in this plant, nor as to the results, but evidently the stone proved very poor, and operations on the field were once more suspended. Some tests of the quartz were also made on behalf of the party at Thames, but these did not yield payable results, the best values recovered being only equal to 17s. 4d. per ton for gold.

The field lay idle this time till about 1907, when a few men were put on to clean out the old drives on the Golden Bar and Federated Yorkshire Claims; but no active developments were entered on till 1910, when the Empire City, Golden Bar, and Federated Yorkshire Claims were taken up by Messrs. Humphries Bros., and a company known as the Dominion Consolidated Developing Company was formed to work them in a large way. This company was registered in January, 1911, and at once erected a twelve-stamp battery. By the end of 1912 the battery had been increased in size to twenty-five heads of stamps, and Frue vanners were installed to save the scheelite. Despite every effort made, however, to economize in the handling and treating of the stone the company failed to make any reasonable profit, but it struggled along for about twelve years, eventually going into liquidation in 1923. During the period the company operated it crushed 99,756 tons of quartz for a yield of 15,440 oz. 1 dwt. 14 gr. gold, valued at £58,969, and recovered as well 380 tons of scheelite valued at approximately £61,257, but only managed to pay in dividends the small sum of £3,750. The average value recovered was equal to 11s. 9d. per ton for gold, and 12s. 3d. per ton for scheelite.

In 1925 a further attempt to work the property was made by a syndicate that had taken it over from the liquidator. On this occasion a system of shrinkage stoping was introduced in the hope that this method of working would enable economies to be effected that would leave a small margin of profit on the mining and treatment. The effort was, however, no more successful than the previous one, 3,615 tons of quartz being mined and treated for gold valued at £2,857 3s. 10d., equal to 15s. 9d. per ton. This recovery was a little better than the company’s, but was still insufficient to pay working-expenses. The market for scheelite having collapsed, there was no added return from this mineral.

In the following year still another attempt was made to work the mine successfully, this time by a party led by Mr. T. H. Harrison, and this was the most promising in the history of the property, 1,287 tons of quartz being crushed in 1926 for a yield of 651 oz. 17 dwt. gold, valued at £2,411 1s. 3d., equal to 37s. 5d. per ton of ore. Unfortunately, just before the end of the year Mr. Harrison was accidentally killed by a fall of ground in the mine, since when, up to the time of writing, mining operations have not been resumed.