Page:Downey•Quartz·Reefs·West·Coast•1928.pdf/27

 the East Reef, is described as being 3 ft. in width and traceable for several chains. The others were smaller, but well defined, showing fair crushing-prospects.

As in the case of the Teremakau Company’s operations, the official publications of the Mines Department are silent as to any subsequent developments on these reefs, and although the writer has sought for reliable information regarding them none has been available. The presumption is that little further work was done on them, the reefs probably turning out on investigation to be merely lenses with no extension worth speaking of in any direction, as proved to be the case with a number of outcrops prospected at Poerua, a mile or two farther north, a few years later.

It has long been believed that in the extreme south of Westland Province—that is, in the region between the Waiho River and the southern boundary of the province—good reefing-country exists. Reefs have undoubtedly been located there, some of them auriferous, but such little information as is at hand concerning them does not seem to indicate that search there holds out much promise of success in revealing deposits of economic importance.

One of the most reliable accounts of the region that has been published appears in the Mines Reports for 1890 (pp. 96 and 97), in which a description is given of the results of twenty years’ investigation of that part of the West Coast District by Mr. Charles Douglass, an observer of good repute, who was, the writer understands, largely responsible for collecting the fine display of South Westland minerals shown at the Christchurch Exhibition of 1906. In this account Mr. Douglass states that there are within the region several belts of country that contain reefs, and that these all run almost parallel to one another, in a north-east and south-west direction. One of the belts he describes as extending from the Okarito Lagoons, crossing the Waiho River and Totara River, to the Copeland Range. This belt he looked upon as the source of the gold found in the Waiho and Cook’s Rivers. He evidently noted a number of outcrops of quartz near the head of the Waikupakupa River, at an elevation of about 4,000 ft. above sea-level, and others in the vicinity of Pike’s Peak, three miles farther south. The outcrops are said to have been well defined, but he could see no gold in them, nor even pyrites. Owing to the weather being very bad at the time he was examining this particular belt, Mr. Douglass says that he was unable to find his way along the shoulder of Mount Tasman, where the Torlesse Formation and the mica-schists join, but felt certain had he been able to do so he would have found something of value, as fine gold-quartz and specimens were to be found in the debris on the Balfour Glacier.

A second belt commenced at the Waikohai Bluff and entendedextended [sic] in a south-west direction across the Paringa watershed. In this belt he found one small leader of gold-quartz, and several reefs containing minor quantities of galena; also dykes containing antimony with an appreciable show of gold, some large reefs containing arsenical pyrites but not gold, several iron-ore lodes, and a coal-seam 5 ft. in thickness.

A third belt commenced at Bruce Bay and extended parallel with the last mentioned. This belt contained reefs carrying a little galena, but in unpayable quantities. A magnetite lode was also found in it, and some fine quartz reefs outcropped near the granite in the Black River.