Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/151

Rh without seriously disturbing one or other of his four mates; neither is he likely to be looked upon as a very appreciable or cheerful companion if heavy snoring is found to be one of his prevailing propensities; but one of our sleeping partners displayed a weakness in the latter direction. I happened to be comfortably ensconced as the centre man of the party, and being thus awoke before daylight, I attempted to rise to discover the snorer, but I found that my two nearest mates had each an arm round my neck. These two were benedicts, you may be sure. One of our mates again had silver on the brain while he slept. He certainly had silvery locks, but precious little on the summit of his cranium or around the brain, whether the same had been reduced by natural wear or wedlock tear. He told us he dreamt he dwelt, not “in marble halls,” but in a silver cave. He didn't cave, but dug, and not in vain, for he discovered a solid vein of virgin silver. He disposed of his plated wares, and substituted o’er his threshold the real ore instead. His better half had many domestic cups and new measures, requiring much silver. Such was his narrative.

But my readers must be wearying for an account of the mine. To it we started on the following morning. Down the creek a distance of 700 ft., half of which is covered with thick timber, the lower portion being heavy boulders, over which we had to do our spiriting with exceeding gentleness, for fear any one should lose the number of his mess. There we saw, in pleasant reality, sufficient corroborative evidence of what the prospectors had stated they obtained.

The object and terminus of our journey were reached by us on Thursday morning, at nine o’clock, and, had the weather been at all propitious, it was our intention to have visited as many of the adjoining creeks and sections for which leases have been applied as we could have accomplished during that and the following day. I also hoped I should have been enabled to have had a sufficient, though cursory, glance at the surrounding country, to have spoken more definitely of the position of the mine in respect to its connection with the Bowen road. In this, however, I was entirely frustrated, owing to the prevalence of thick fog and heavy rain during the greater part of the day, and could not form anything like a correct or reliable opinion, though there can be little doubt that a shorter course is certain to be found than the round-about and rugged track we had just traversed. After descending, as I have already stated, 700 ft. of Mine Creek—which creek, during ordinary weather, is a very small tributary or waterfall, emptying itself into the left-hand branch of the Waitaha River—we reached the outcrop of the galena ore. Here it appears cropping out of the mountain with a thickness of only two or three inches. From that point the vein is easily traceable without any break for a distance of between 40 and 60 ft., thickening gradually as it is followed, until it reaches a thickness of nine or ten inches. A few feet from where the vein is first visible, it appears to have an inclination of dipping from east to west, at at an angle roughly of about twenty degrees to the westward, but on proceeding further along the line of the ore, and reaching what we may term for the present the main lead—that is, where the vein is nine and ten inches thick—there is a fall in the lode, and