the rock must be crushed to powder, and the gold separated from the powder by washing and mingling it with quicksilver. Quartz-mining requires a great deal of money to carry it on; so much, indeed, that it is generally conducted by companies, and these companies, it is proper to say, very often take more from the pockets of the stock-holders than they do from the mines. Alluvial diggings are the resort of the poor man, who needs only pick, shovel, and pan to set him up in business.
"During the year ending March 31, 1886, the mines of New Zealand yielded 233,068 ounces of gold, which was valued at more than four millions of dollars; at least this was the amount entered at the custom-house for exportation; some was doubtless absorbed in the colony, but no one can tell how much.
"The yield of the Thames district for the same time was 61,939 ounces, or more than one-fourth the entire amount for the colony. During the month of May, 1886, 3039 ounces of gold were taken from 2574 tons of rock. Some of the mines have paid good dividends to their owners, but others have never made any returns. The ups and downs of mining in New Zealand are about the same as in other parts of the world.
"There are nearly five hundred mining companies registered in New Zealand, with a paid-up capital of about ten million dollars. Down to the end of 1885 more than two hundred million dollars' worth of gold had been exported from New Zealand, so that there can be no question of the importance of the colony as a mining region. According to the official returns there are more than eleven thousand men engaged in mining; two thousand of these are quartz-miners, and the rest, including three thousand Chinese, are in the placer mines.
"The placer miners do not confine themselves to the valleys of the rivers among the mountains, but seek gold along the west shore, where they find it under the bowlders and other stones embedded in the sand of the beaches. The popular idea is that this gold is washed up from the sea during severe gales; the scientific men say it is really washed up by the lifting power of the waves on the sand that has been brought down by the rivers and drifted along the shore. Some of this gold is obtained by washing the sands in sluice-boxes, just as in operations among the mountains; and deposits, or 'pockets,' are occasionally discovered in the sand under the loose stones. Sometimes these deposits are of considerable value, and we have been told of a miner who found a single pocket containing nearly thirty ounces of gold. Similar pock-
