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occurred it is said the gold values always improved. The stepping-down greatly increased the difficulty of working the reef, however, for it necessitated the putting-in of lower and longer levels each time, and this, combined with a gradual falling-off in gold content in the quartz, eventually brought about the cessation of operations.

Several other mines were opened in the locality, amongst which were the Ophir and the Phoenix. The latter was started about the end of 1870. A battery was erected, and a certain amount of stone was crushed in it. No record is available as the quantity treated, nor the results, but the ore was evidently very poor, for the company soon ceased work. This mine is said to have had a reef from 6 ft. to 8 ft. wide, which outcropped on the north-east side of Cole’s Gully, traversing amphibole schists close to their contact with the carbonaceous phyllites. The Ophir Mine was on the south side of the same gully, somewhat to the east of the main contact line on which the Johnstone’s United reef occurred. The reef in the mine was about 7 ft. in width, but was very irregular. The Ophir Company also erected a small battery, and is said to have recovered about 100 oz. gold from quartz averaging 5 dwt. per ton

Another mining venture opened in the same locality was the Red Hill Mine, which subsequently achieved some notoriety in the Dominion as probably the worst example of “wild-cat” flotation this country has experienced. The Red Hill was situated about two miles northward of the Johnstone’s United. Some small leaders were found in it which are said to have been highly auriferous, but they were only from 2 in. to 4 in. wide. Four of these were followed down from surface for a short distance, and an adit was afterwards driven for 411 ft. about 90 ft. below the surface, from which the leaders were worked out. What gold came from them is not known. A low-level adit was then started about 230 ft. below No. 1 adit, but in this only one of the small veins seems to have been intersected. The property was brought before the notice of capitalists in England, and a so-called mining engineer was sent out to report on it. This engineer, Mr. Price Williams, is said to have reported it as worth £100,000, and a company of £150,000 was formed to work it. Of the capital, no less than £98,000 was given to the promoters in shares, and £2,000 in cash. Another English mining engineer, a Mr. Russel, also evidently visited the property, and in his report, contained in the prospectus of the company, published in the Mining Journal of 6th November, 1886, he estimated that 33,250 tons of gold-bearing quartz would be mined, which would yield 229,425 oz. gold, or in value £883,286, and stated that he considered the value of the return to be expected from the mine had almost been placed beyond the region of speculation, and that, with his experience of the gold-mines of New Zealand, he knew of no other having such good prospects.

After the company took the property over a battery was erected, and an expensive water-race partially constructed, and in various ways some £11,764 was actually spent in New Zealand in connection with the operations, but beyond putting in the low level for a short distance practically no mining was done, and not a single ounce of gold appears to have been won. It is not difficult to realize how greatly a flotation of this kind must have injured New Zealand mining interests in the Old World; and with regard to it Gordon remarks,^[1] “It is really a great calamity to the colony to see foreign capital invested in unsuccessful mining ventures like this; but the