end it on
the mine. The shares were then as low as tenpence. The company began to
get gold about the end of 1884, and the prospect improved so much that the
Nundydroog mine in May, 1885, was enabled to raise money on debentures,
and so to again carry on work. If the shareholders of the Mysore company
had not persevered, it is almost absolutely certain that the whole of the
Kolar gold field would have been permanently abandoned. This is just one
of those cases which cheer the sinking hopes of shareholders, and attract
vast sums of money to gold mines; and no wonder, when we find the chairman
of the Mysore company apologizing lately because he could not declare a
dividend of more than fifty per cent.; that up to the end of 1892 the gold
sold by the company realized L1,149,430 2s. 1d., and that the total sum
paid in dividends amounted to L602,156 10s. 6d.

The Mysore mine had been sunk to a depth of about 200 feet when it was
proposed that the project should be abandoned. Just below this depth the
miners struck the Champion lode on which the Mysore, Ooregum, Nundydroog,
Balaghaut, and Indian Consolidated Companies are working. The Mysore mine
has now been sunk to a depth of over 1,200 feet, Ooregum 850 feet, and
Nundydroog over 860 feet. The lode is not richer per ton, as is commonly
supposed, on greater depths being reached. The yield per ton is probably
about the same, though from larger quantities being taken out, and the use
of the rock drill, which causes a large extraction of country rock, the
product per ton of quartz is apparently smaller. The specimens now found
are as good as ever.

The circumstances of the Champion lode are briefly these. In the interior
of a surrounding of granite there is a great basin of hornblende rock of
schistose character, and through this, at an angle of about forty-five
degrees, runs the lode. This is not of continuous thickness. In some
places it is four or five feet wide, in others runs down to an almost
vanishing point, and then again thickens. In the case of the mines now
working on this lode, the basin of hornblende is more than two miles in
width, and is possibly many thousands of feet in depth, so there seems to
be a reasonable prospect of there being a long future before the workers
on the Champion lode.

The Kolar gold field is about seven miles in length, and averages about
two to three miles in width. There are in all fourteen mines, but two of
them are practically stopped.