GENERAL MINING NEWS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 147, 3 September 1872, Page 7

GENERAL MINING NEWS.

There is said to be a general revival of mining matters at Coromandel. The quartz minera in Victoria are increasing, and the alluvial minera decreasing, in numbers.

A writer in a Melbourne paper urges the : holding of an annual exhibition of mining machinery. The Moonta Mining Company, South Australia, has during the last ten years paid £680,000 in wages. The stone lately obtained in the Crown Cross Reef, Stawell, at a depth of 800 ft., has yielded 26zs. Bdwts. of gold per ton. The export of gold from Victoria during the second quarter of 1872 shows a considerable falling-off as compared with the same period of 1851. It is reported that a lode of copper ore has been discovered in Ballarat East. The reef is said to be four feet wide, and to assay at the rate of 60 per cent, of pure copper. A miner at the newly discovered goldfields in North Australia writes to a brother at Sandhurst: —"No such alluvial diggings have been found in Victoria as there are here. 1 sunk a hole 14ft., and got 2580z5. of gold oil' the bottom."

A party of seven men have arrived in Christchurch from a prospecting trip into the Mackenzie country. They state that they have made £3 a week each while there, and have come to town to procure the means to make further researches.

An accident occurred in the Bright Smile mine at the Thames on Aug. 6, by which a young man named John Preece, aged 21, was injured beyond hope of recovery. The cause of the accident was the falling of a piece of mullock from the wall of the drive, which fell on his back and broke it.

There was a magnificent cake of gold exhi bited in the window of the Union Bank at Ballarat the other afternoon. In shape, it resembled a brick, but was somewhat larger, weighing 10280z5., and was obtained from the mine of the Pleasant Creek Cross Reef Co.

A Ballai'at reformer proposes that a treadmill be erected in the gaol to work a quartzmill, where poor miners' quartz shall be crushed by prison labour, —the treadmill and the quartz-mill to be in separate apartments, so that the auri sacra fames may not have a felonious development.

As an illustration of the benefit of laying down tramways for the conveyance of quavtz, the Thames Advertiser mentions that while it cost the Queen of Beauty claim £34 per week for cartage to keep going the two mills on the Karaka employed by them, now that the tramway has been laid, the same work is better done for £4.

The Ovens and Murray Advertiser reports that a Chinaman was caught while robbing the sluices of Morris and party at Reid's Creek. The proprietors of the claim had fixed a spring gun in the race, and the Chinaman in his haste to get rich fired the gun. He was so severely injured, that he had to be taken to the hospital. The loss of gold by the imperfect methods of amalgamation that are in use in the various goklfields of Victoria is estimated by a practical correspondent on mining who writes to one of the Melbourne papers to be not less than £IOO,OOO in value in a year, and he arrives at these figures by calculating that for every ounce obtained twelve grains are never recovered.

Jim Crow, the Dayhtford Mercury says, must be a veritable "Tom Tiddler's Ground," where the precious me.al is picked up by the feet of those who walk over the soil. That such is the fact, the following incident will show. Lately, an alluvial miner in indifferent circumstances, came into Daylesford to replace his well-worn boots by new ones. He could barely spare money enough for the purpose, but necessity compelled him to do so. Imagine his gratification, on pulling oil' his old watertights prior to trying on a better pair, to find a 3dwt. nugget imbedded in the clay on the soles. The man paid for his purchase, and went his way rejoicing. We take the following from Mr Haughton's I report on the Goldlicids of Xew Zealand, presented to the Assembly recently :—The special taxation of the goldtiolds, including the gold duty, amounted in the year ending 131st December, 1871, to the gross sum of L.153,577 16s. lUd., or about L.5 12s. 9d per head upon every working miner.—During the year 1871, 80,372 ounces of silver, valued at L.23,145 were exported from Auckland ; and during the March quarter of 1872, 18,683 ounces, valued at L.4900 ; making the total export of this metal from the Colony up to 31st March, 1872, 147,142 ounces, valued at L.42,418. This has been exclusively the produce of the ■Sauraki goldfield (Thames), where the gold P found so heavily alloyed with silver as to ■fender the latter, after separation, so considerable an item of export. ■ A singular and unaccountable feature (says m* Pleasant Creek News) in connection with ■or deep quartz mines is being developed B ail 3 7 , which much surprises those well expe■encad in mining matters. It is the decrease W water as the greater depths are reached. ■J the Magdala shaft, at OoJft., the water has ■creased to a minimum ; in the Crown Cross shalt, at 800 ft, notwith■wdirig the two reefs recently struck, no Btra water has been met with ; and in the drive of the Extended Cross Reef Com■ty at a depth of over 800 ft., the water is Mflter than it was nearer the surface. This, ■ a general rule, is very important to comWUes engaged in deep sinking operations, as ■will greatly lessen the cost of pumping maWnery, which has mostly been erected ■Jr? m tne supposition that the water HEed heavier as a g reater de Pth was