Visit to the Opawa Stream, 1862.

In September of the same year I paid a visit to the Opawa Stream (South Canterbury) where a piece of auriferous quartz had been found by two gentlemen residing in Timaru, but our search for other specimens was unsuccessful; moreover, repeated prospecting of the alluvial deposits did not reveal the least sign of the precious metal. There is no doubt, however, that some portions of the ranges in which the main sources of the Opawa take their rise, consist of rocks to a certain extent auriferous, to which I shall allude more fully when treating of the geology of that district. The goldfields in the neighbouring Province of Otago having in the mean time gained such large dimensions, and giving such magnificent results, it was of course of the greatest importance to the population of this Province to have the country examined where the Otago Goldfields reached nearest to the boundary line. My examinations of the eastern portions of the province had already shown—although there were some sedimentary rocks near Burke's Pass, which might be auriferous—that all the rest were of an un-auriferous character, and it was therefore very desirable to examine the rocks along the boundary line of both provinces and, if possible, to follow them to the West Coast by way of Lake Wanaka, where gold was reported to have been found across the Otago boundary line in this province. Having been prevented, six months previously, by a continuance of bad weather at the beginning of winter, from examining the river Hopkins and its tributaries as carefully as I intended, in order to settle the question if and to what extent auriferous rocks occurred there, I proposed to revisit that portion of the province.