✨ Report on exploration
20
granite formation, except near the mouths of these
rivers, which is of limestone, with numerous and
large fossil shells, some six inches in diameter.
From Haihai to Little Wanganui, some fourteen
miles, is a sandy beach forming the seaboard of the
principal flat land of the Karamea. In many places
the sand is black or dark chocolate color; and at the
mouth of the Karamea river, what miners call the
colour of gold has been found on the beach near the
mud-flat on the south side of the river.
At Wanganui, the low coast range of limestone,
about 1,000 feet high, again begins, and ends near
Mokihinui.
I am now engaged in cutting a foot-track to the
Lyell, making small cuttings everywhere where side-
ling occurs. I am following the main Wangapeka
up to its source, crossing the watershed into the
Karamea, following down that river a short distance,
and striking up a small branch to a saddle which di-
vides the Karamea from the Lyell, which I follow
down to the Buller, opposite the confluence. The
Inangahua flows a little down the Buller, but nearly
in the same general line, forming the natural road
into the Grey. During the progress of this work,
which is rapidly proceeding, one gang of men will
cut a six feet track down the Karamea, and the whole
will be finished in about six weeks.
Independently of the gold, there is a block of fine
timber land at the mouth of the Karamea, of about
20,000 acres; the quantity in the valley I cannot as
yet give an estimate of; and there will also be a fine
block of land in the Inangahua and Buller, near the
confluence of these rivers. There is also a fair quan-
tity of good land, worth surveying at once, on the
Wangapeka, as far up as the place where the old
bridle track leaves the main Wangapeka and turns
to the Rolling River.
I have, &c.,
JOHN ROCHFORT.
Nelson, April 7, 1863.
PRINTED BY E. LUCAS, BRIDGE STREET, NELSON.
Nelson Provincial Gazette 1863, No 7
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
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Report on exploration for a pass to the Karamea and coal deposits
(continued from previous page)
🌾 Primary Industries & Resources7 April 1863
Exploration, Karamea, Coal, Geology, Goldfields, Mineral Survey, Nelson, Wangapeka, Lyell, Buller, Inangahua
- John Rochfort