1094 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



share-holders two hundred thousand pounds in dividends in the course of a twelvemonth ; 

 the " Kurunui," which gave a yield of twenty-five thousand pounds' worth of gold from 

 the first week's crushing; the " Long Drive," "Queen of Beauty," " Moanataiara " and many 

 others : the average yield all round from the Thames being an ounce and a quarter 

 per ton. At present the "Cambria" is the most productive mine. In as many months it 

 has paid twenty dividends of sixpence each. Although the Lower Thames gold-field is 

 actually confined within an area of four miles long by two or three in breadth, the 

 entire peninsula eighty miles long by from twenty to thirty miles broad is heavily 

 charged with gold, silver and other minerals. The Thames touched the zenith of its 

 prosperity in 1871, when the output of gold was three hundred and thirty thousand three 

 hundred and twenty-six ounces, valued at one million one hundred and eighty-six thou- 

 sand seven hundred and eight pounds. Since then the declension has kept pace with the 

 gradual working out of the upper levels, but there will be a renewed and more perma- 

 nent era of prosperity for the field when systematic operations are started upon the 

 lower levels, which so far are practically intact. The Thames possesses the second largest 

 pumping-engine in the colonies, its cylinder being eighty-two inches in diameter, length 

 of stroke ten feet, and its lifting capacity ten tons per minute. 



Coromandel is situated higher up the Thames Peninsula, and was the first gold-field 

 discovered in the colony, but native troubles prevented it for many years from being 

 properly opened up. The gold is finely disseminated through the stone, and is often 

 found in combination with silver and other minerals. This, too, is the general charac- 

 teristic of the highly mineralized ore obtained in the Upper Thames or Te Aroha 

 District. There are three distinct routes for journeying thither. We may take the steamer 

 or coach at Grahamstown, and voyage up the lovely Waihou River, or jolt over the 

 undulating country of the Thames Valley. Or, if the train offer greater temptation, we 

 may take it at Auckland, and without a single break hurry through the Waikato Valley 

 to the alluvial expanse from which Te Aroha (" The Love ") springs abruptly aloft for 

 three thousand two hundred feet into the clear canopy of heaven. In any case, the 

 journey will be of about the same duration, namely, six hours. 



The township of Te Aroha is prettily situated in the contracted space between the 

 Waihou and the base of the mountain. It is a sanatorium of considerable importance, 

 for its domain contains no less than eighteen medicinal and therapeutic springs, the great 

 majority of which are thermal. Their waters are all feebly alkaline, and strongly charged 

 with carbonic acid gas, which is constantly escaping from them in large quantities. It 

 was only in 1880 that the district was opened up to settlement and to mining enterprise, 

 and the gold-mining operations are now centred at the township of Waiorongomai, three 

 miles from Te Aroha. Here has been erected, at a cost of twenty thousand pounds, 

 one qf the largest crushing plants in the colony It comprises forty stampers and 

 twelve berdans. From this battery, a tram-way leads to the mines at the mouth of the 

 creek, about one thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level, the principal one being 

 the " New Find." The district is possessed of enormous mineral resources, but as the 

 gold is of very fine quality, and the quartz containing it is likewise heavily charged with 

 silver, galena, and other minerals, the process of extraction is costly, in default of some 

 cheap and effective means of the kind rapidly coming into use of late years of 



