450

ADDITIONAL BUSH LICENSES.

Provincial Treasury,
Auckland, November 6th 1867.

A DDITIONAL List of Persons to whom Bush Licenses have been issued by the Provincial Treasurer, in conformity with clause 44 of the “ Licensing Act, 1863”

JOSEPH BOULTER, Shortland Town
WILLIAM WALLACE WALLIS, Shortland Town.

PUBLIC NOTIFICATION.

Superintendent’s Office,
Auckland, 4th November, 1867.

THE following Correspondence and Report relative to the Karaka Gold Field, are published for general information.

J. WILLIAMSON,
Superintendent.

Colonial Secretary’s Office,
Wellington, 28th October, 1867.

SIR,—I have to transmit, for your Honor’s information, the accompanying copy of Captain Hutton’s Report on the Karaka Gold Field.

I have, &c.,
(For Colonial Secretary),
(Signed) W. GISBORNE,
Under Secretary.

His Honor
The Superintendent,
Auckland.

CAPTAIN HUTTON’S REPORT ON THE KARAKA GOLDFIELD.

23rd September, 1867.

SIR,—I have the honor to forward, for the information of the Hon. the Colonial Secretary, the report of Captain Hutton on the Karaka goldfield in the Thames district of the Province of Auckland, obtained in accordance with the authority conveyed in your letter of the 28th August last, No. 67-2796.

This Report, I consider, proves satisfactorily the existence, in the district referred to, of gold bearing formations similar in their nature to those at Coromandel; and that, in forming an estimate of the extent to which they are capable of development, the experience of the diggings at that place should be taken as a guide.

The appended extract from my instructions to Captain Hutton expresses my own views on the structure of the adjoining district, founded on observations made in 1864 and 1866.

The association of gold with volcanic rocks belonging to the tertiary period, near the point where they have been erupted through the older palaeozoic slates, has a very important bearing on the question of the occurrence of gold in the interior of the North Island, as there is a probability that many other localities besides the Cape Colville peninsula will prove auriferous to a similar extent.

I see no reason, however, to expect an extensive alluvial diggings in the Karaka district, or that it will afford a field for the employment of a large mining population.—I have, &c.,

JAMES HECTOR.

The Under Colonial Secretary.

EXTRACT FROM DR. HECTOR’S INSTRUCTIONS.

The range which separates the Thames Valley from the Bay of Plenty I found to consist of a nucleus of aphanite slates interbedded with green brecciated and greywacke slates, being part of the upper palaeozoic series. Flanking and capping this nucleus is a great development of the following members of the tertiary series :—(a). Brown coal formation, very local. (b). Quartzose gravels, cemented so that they break away in large blocks. (c). Waitemata series (pliocene). (d). Trachytic tuff. (e). Trachytic breccia.

The palaeozoic rocks are cut by dykes of trachyte (granite of the miners), which is charged with auriferous and cupreous iron pyrites.

They, moreover, contain quartz veins, which are also pyritiferous and auriferous. The older rocks decompose very freely to laterite, and the fissures then contain secondary deposits of silica, manganese, &c., especially when near the supposed trachyte dykes, alongside of which in some cases there would seem to have been fissures that were only gradually filled up by deposits from thermal waters, giving rise to the banded, irregular, and crystalline structure of the lodes which is so characteristic of Coromandel.

The composition of the several rocks in the vicinity of the lodes at Coromandel shews their singular character, arising, I suspect, from all the soluble matters of what was once a basic rock having been removed and replaced by silica, and partly by iron pyrites containing gold. That this mineral is the main source of the gold is shown by a section of the lode ground I made in 1864, when I found that the so-called quartz reefs were contained between two varieties of the pyritous rock, the sulphurets having been removed from the overlying rock, but still remaining in the lower, the reef itself being a band of mullock containing kernels and geodes of quartz and carbonate of lime, and evidently formed by infiltration.

A third manner in which quartz occurs in the district is in the trachyte tufas, but it is then more chalcedonic and crystalline, and associated with jasper and chert, and is non-auriferous, as proved by the numerous trials at Keven’s Point, Coromandel.

The older rocks present too limited an area in the Coromandel district to form the source of much gold by direct denudation as in the south of New Zealand; still, where they have been decomposed to form the red