APRIL — sept. 1859.] the Province of Auckland. 125 



is very rich, but, as compared with Australian and Californian 

 gold-fields, of limited extent and depth. (*I washed a few buck- 

 etfuls of surface earth, and gravel, at a creek pointed out to me 

 by Mr. Charles Heaphy, near Ring's Mill, at the Kapanga. Every 

 panful showed scales of thin gold, with small fragments of quartz 

 streaked and studded with veins and spangles of gold. These 

 " specimens, as they are called by diggers, show no — or very little 

 — sign of being water-worn, but are sharp and crisp fragments, as 

 if they had been broken up on the spot, or in the immediate vici- 

 nity. I think the quartz veins in the mountains should be thorough- 

 ly examined, and that, when once the day has come that the Co - 

 romandel gold-fields are worked, the attention of the "digger" 

 should be directed as well to the hills immediately above any 

 rich deposits as to the alluvial workings below.*) 



The Coal Beds at Coromandel occurring between strata of 

 trachytic breccia are too thin to be of any value, and as the coal 

 formation is absent, there is no ground for hoping that a work- 

 able seam may be found. 



The primary formation occurs, to a more considerable extent, to 

 the Eastward of Auckland, in ranges on both sides of the Wairoa 

 river attaining an altitude of 1,500 feet above the sea, — and strik- 

 ing from thence Northwards, over Waiheki and Kawau, to the 

 Bay of Islands. In a Southerly direction, they extend, through 

 the Hangaivera and Taupiri ranges, across the Waikato, through 

 the Hakari-mata and Hauturu range — parallel with the West 

 Coast — to the Mokau district, where, at Wairere, the Mokau river 

 falls in a magnificent cascade over a lofty precipice of that rock. 



The same formation occurs again in the Rangitoto mountain on 

 the Upper Waipa, and West of Taupo lake in the Tuhua moun- 

 tains. But the most extensive range of primary rocks is that 

 which commences near Wellington under the name of Tararua 

 and Buaivahine, and runs in a North-easterly direction to the East 

 shore of Taupo lake, under the name of Kawianaiva, in which 

 rises the principal source of the Waikato — there called Tongariro 

 river. The range continues from the shores of Taupo lake, in a 

 North-easterly direction, to the East Cape, under the principal 

 name of Tewhaiti. This lofty and extensive mountain range — 



