Page:Downey•Quartz·Reefs·West·Coast•1928.pdf/71

 The total quartz crushed from the claim amounted to 699 tons, which yielded 664 oz. gold, valued at £2,611.

No. 2 South Keep-it-Dark Mine.—The original company formed to work this claim was formed in 1882, but it did no good until after the shaft already several times referred to was sunk. In driving the 280 ft. level from it, a shoot of stone averaging 3 ft. in width was driven on for 50 ft. This stone was subsequently stoped out to surface, and proved of fair quality, enabling the company to pay a small amount in dividends. The level was then pushed on in a northerly direction, but although boulders of stone were met with frequently—a feature of this ore-channel for the 2,000 or more feet it has been driven on in the various claims—no solid stone was met with till a distance of 563 ft. from the shaft had been reached. At this point a body of quartz averaging about 4 ft. in width was encountered, which was subsequently driven on for 129 ft. This reef was stoped up for 200 ft. towards the surface, when for a time all trace of it was lost. An intermediate level driven to the southward from the top of the stope located it again, however, and from this level the remaining 100 ft. to surface was stoped out. Below the 280.ft. or No. 2 level a winze was sunk on the shoot for 90 ft., but at 35 ft. down the stone cut out, and as only a short length of the claim intervened between the winze and the boundary of the Nil Desperandum (Hercules) Claim the small quantity of quartz in sight in the winze was taken out, and that end of the mine was abandoned. In 1893 an inclined shaft was sunk-from the 280 ft. level for 175 ft., not far from the foot of the vertical shaft, and No. 3 level was opened up, with a view to picking up at that depth the southern shoot of stone. This level was extended, however, for a distance of upwards of 190 ft. in a northerly direction without any reef being met with. The level was then extended into the Pandora ground in the hope that some stone that was going underfoot 200 ft. south of the shaft on No. 2 level might have made into a workable ore-body as it went down, but here again disappointment was experienced, nothing but track carrying occasional boulders of quartz being found. In a final effort to make something of its property the company now ran a crosscut out to the west from No. 2 level from near the foot of the vertical shaft in search of the lode-channel in which the western shoot of the Keep-it-Dark mine occurred. This working was extended to a total distance of 516 ft. and cut several reef-tracks, but nothing of any value was got in it, and in 1899 the company ceased operations. Later on the claim came into possession of the Keep-it-Dark Company, but no further work was done on it. During its productive life the mine crushed 8,829 tons of quartz for a yield of 6,024 oz. gold, valued at £23,942, and paid in dividends £8,600.

Nil Desperandum (Hercules) Mine.—The ground immediately north of the No. 2 South Keep-it-Dark appears to have been taken up as the Hercules Claim in 1875, but the company evidently did no good, for only two years later another company known as the Nil Desperandum held the property. The first company evidently did some work in the way of putting in adits to a shallow depth below the outcrop of a shoot of stone that had been discovered, and for some years the second company showed little activity, for by 1885 the deepest workings on the claim had not penetrated below No. 3 level, approximately 150 ft. below the surface. About 1886 a more vigorous policy seems to have been adopted, and the sinking of a vertical underground or “monkey” shaft was started at a point about 300 ft. in from the portal of No. 3 adit. This shaft was pushed down