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Auriferous quartz seems to have been first found in the early “eighties” in this locality, which is well up the slopes of Mount Greenland, about 2,000 ft. above sea-level, and nine miles from Ross by a steep mountain-track. A number of claims, known as the William Tell, Swiss Republic, All Nations, and Larnach, were taken up, but after very little prospecting had been done all the ground was abandoned. In 1887 the William Tell Claim had some further work done on it, when quartz showing free gold was met with in an adit level driven 57 ft. below the outcrop of a reef exposed in the creek. This adit was driven for 225 ft. on the course of the reef, about 200 ft. of the distance being on solid stone said to have been 4 ft. wide, with gold fairly distributed through it. A winze was then sunk on the reef at 76 ft. from the western end of the adit, but the stone became broken and finally disappeared a few feet down. Another adit was driven, 85 ft. lower than No. 1, for a distance of 567 ft., where a rise was put up to connect with the bottom of the winze. Although the prospects were not very promising, the company that held the claim erected a battery at considerable expense, and started to work out the quartz above the upper adit. No records are available as to the quantity of quartz mined from here, nor as to the yield of gold, but evidently the recoveries were much below what had been anticipated, for in the same year (1890) the company collapsed, and abandoned the ground after selling the battery to Mr. G. Perotti, of Greymouth, who removed it to the Minerva Mine at Blackball.

The Swiss Republic Mine adjoined the William Tell on the west. In 1888 a reef 3 ft. wide at the outcrop was prospected, which showed a little gold. An adit level was driven on it for about 400 ft., and at 60 ft. from the portal a crosscut was put out in a southerly direction for 240 ft. In this crosscut two small leaders and a reef 4 ft. in width were intersected, all of which were said to carry gold. A winze was then started in the lode, near the portal of the adit, at a place where the reef was about 2 ft. 6 in. wide, but it was apparently not sunk to any depth, and very little more work was ever done on the claim.

Simultaneously with the carrying-on of the foregoing work in the William Tell and Swiss Republic Claims, the All Nations and Larnach Companies, which held ground to the east of the William Tell, were engaged in putting out long crosscuts in their respective areas. The All Nations extended its crosscut for about 610 ft. in a north-easterly direction, in the course of which it cut a 9 in. reef at 34ft., an 11 in. reef at 73 ft., and what is described as a reef formation 14 ft. wide at 346 ft., as well as a number of smaller leaders. As far as can be learned, none of these formations carried gold in payable quantities. At about 270 ft. farther to the east, and nearly parallel to the All Nations crosscut, the Larnach Company ran one out for 1,000 ft., cutting on the way all the reefs or leaders met in the All Nations workings. No payable values were found in any of them.

With the collapse of the William Tell Company in 1890, and the removal of the battery, the efforts of the other companies were paralysed, and no more work appears to have been done in the locality till 1896, when a company known as the Alpha Special Claim Syndicate took up all the