Page:Downey•Quartz·Reefs·West·Coast•1928.pdf/128

 Gold-mining Syndicate, prior to disposing of its property to the company, reported one dividend, absorbing £300.

Following the discovery of the Alexander reefs, prospecting licenses covering nearly 4,000 acres were taken up in the locality, and a good deal of surface investigation was carried out on them; but although a number of reefs, some of which were of large size, were found, nothing of any value has been so far located outside the company’s areas.

Summarizing briefly regarding the Inangahua auriferous quartz area, it may be said that such mines as the North Blackwater and the Blackwater may have some years of productive life ahead of them; the mines at the Alexander River also have possibilities that vigorous prospecting, well directed, may yet lead to important developments; but of the other mines at present working it is doubtful if any offer promise of better days in the future. In some of the old mines now closed down, such as the Globe-Progress, Golden Fleece, Cumberland, Caledonian, and perhaps the Inkerman West, there is some reason for thinking that quartz bodies of fair grade still await discovery, but the tracing of these would in all cases be a costly business under present-day conditions. Apart from the possibility of finding these ore-bodies, the only hope of a more prosperous future for quartz-mining in the county depends on the discovery, by surface prospecting, of new reefs; but, in view of the very large amount of investigation already carried out in the likely areas by competent and energetic men, the chances of finding such reefs do not look bright. Nevertheless, the discovery within recent years of auriferous stone at the Alexander River shows that there is at least some small probability that further close search may reveal payable deposits in other parts. Practically all the country in which reefs are likely to occur has been gone over by the prospector, but it must be remembered that all the reef-bearing areas of the district are heavily timbered and deeply covered with mosses and forest rubbish, and in country such as this reefs may easily have been missed.

The most promising places for new finds would undoubtedly be along the general lines of the eastern and western reef-systems occurring within the Reefton auriferous belt on which all the mines so far opened up have been located.

On the eastern system the only two mines opened up to the present are those of the Kirwan’s Reward and Alexander River Companies, and they are about twelve miles apart. In between them, and for some distance to the north of Kirwan’s Reward, there stretches a belt of greywackes (slate) in which new finds of quartz are possible.

On the western system the country between the different lode-series has been well examined in the past. In that stretch between the Blackwater and Big River groups of mines many reefs have been found, some of them of large size, but so far none of them has been shown to have sufficient gold to pay for working. Much the same may be said of the stretch north of Boatman’s towards Dunphy Creek. Nevertheless, within these areas, and those between the other lode-series, can future prospecting effort alone be recommended, and in them there are still possibilities of undiscovered ore-shoots occurring.