Page:Downey•Quartz·Reefs·West·Coast•1928.pdf/82

 No. 2, but no stone had been taken from this lower horizon. During the course of its operations the Progress Gold-mining Company mined and crushed 60,235 tons of quartz for a yield of 28,185 oz. gold, valued at £98,482, and paid in dividends £17,400.

A new company, the Progress Mines, Ltd., a subsidiary of the Consolidated Goldfields, was formed, with a capital of £250,000, to work the various claims acquired, and a vigorous development policy was at once instituted. A large new shaft, the Progress or “B” shaft, was started, and a powerful winding plant was installed. A new battery of forty stamps (afterwards increased to sixty-five) was also erected, and supplemented with chlorinating and cyaniding units for the treatment of the auriferous concentrates and tailings.

Crushing started in May, 1898, and, except for a short stoppage in 1912, continued until 1920, during which period 911,562 tons of quartz were crushed for a yield of 356,286 oz. 9 dwt. 7 gr. gold, valued at £1,399,972 16s., to which must be added 3,062 oz. 2 dwt. 10 gr. gold, valued at £10,980 16s. 8d., recovered from treatment of tailings between 1920 and 1926, after crushing operations had ceased; and dividends to the amount of £326,562 10s. were paid. The output of the group of mines since they were first opened up, and to the end of 1926, may thus be estimated at 1,044,913 tons of quartz, which yielded 416,377 oz. gold, valued at £1,645,302, out of which £384,062 10s. was paid in dividends.

The Progress Mines, Ltd., opened several further levels from the Globe, or “A,” shaft, but concentrated its efforts mainly in pushing down the “B” shaft, which was eventually sunk to No. 11 level, 1,416 ft. below the shaft-collar. In the Globe section, several of the blocks lying towards the western side of the claim united above No. 6 level to form one large ore-body, which lived down to No. 8 level, where it was broken up. The various blocks mined in the combined claims were followed without much difficulty to the horizon of No. 8 level, but below that depth they became becamebecame [sic] badly broken, and were found shattered into fragments lying at all orientations and inclinations. No. 9 level yielded a large tonnage of ore, but No. 10 was not nearly so productive, and on No. 11 the only block of any importance found was the Pioneer block, which was, however, of great size. This block dipped flatly under the level, then turned upward again and died out against a fault; and, as it was the last known payable ore-body in the mine, its exhaustion brought about a cessation of mining operations.

There is no room for doubt that the various ore-bodies worked in the mine owed their erratic occurrence to earth-movements, and that they were all eventually cut off by a powerful fault. What the exact nature of this faulting was, however, evidently puzzled the management to know. With a view to solving the problem, a start was made to construct a complete model of the ore-bodies, but the model was not finished, and was long ago dismantled. Certain mining operations carried out seem to indicate that at different times both normal and reversed faulting were accepted as accounting for the disturbed nature of the country containing the orebodies, and there is not lacking evidence that, for a short period, anyhow, a system of synclinal and anticlinal folding was held to have been responsible for it. It must be said that a study of the position in the lower levels is greatly complicated by minor faulting; but the opinion now generally held by experienced mining-men familiar with the mine is that the cutting-off of the various ore-shoots was effected by a normal fault