The above four mining areas will not include all the alluvial mentioned in this report as existing on this portion (A), but if the three streams are held, the alluvial lying between them will be safe from others, who would have no water for working it. This is only intended to meet the case temporarily, and until further surveys have been made and the Mining Laws revised.
(B) Negotiations should be entered into with the Niger Company to take over this part of the river, or with a view to an amalgamation of interests.
A mining licence should then be obtained to commence at a beacon 10,343 feet due west of the N’Gell beacon, thence 2½ miles due west, thence 1 mile due south, thence 2½ miles due east, thence 1 mile due north to the starting point, enclosing an area of 2½ square miles.
(C) I recommend that an exclusive prospecting licence be applied for, identical with Sections 36 to 40, enclosing an area of five square miles. If a prospecting licence is not allowed in any form, the expense of holding this piece of land under mining licences must be borne until prospecting is completed.
There remains only the river flowing through Sections 46 and 35. A rectangular prospecting area (or, if refused, a mining area) ½ mile wide, east and west, by about 1¼ miles long, north and south, will be sufficient to hold this while its examination is going on.
With regard to staff and the work for the immediate future, a good surveyor and assistant must be sent out whose chief duty, apart from the demarcation of boundaries, would be the determination of grades in the rivers, measurement of water, survey of falls, and the preparation of sections showing the alluvial beds as disclosed by the pits and bores. An experienced man to carry out the boring operations should also be provided, and the whole work placed in charge of a capable hydraulic mining engineer.
CONCLUSION
It is above all things desirable to aim at working the whole of the deposits about this river as one large power proposition, deriving the power either from falls on the property or from Kwall. Should it be found impossible to do this (from failure to secure the land and falls required), then it will have to be proved whether the deposits on the six square miles of “A” portion justify the expense of harnessing falls and conveying power to the heads of the streams. If not, as much of the alluvial as possible must be worked out by the same system of sluicing as was employed last year, but on an increased scale, and with a more elaborate method of dealing with the water supply.
I am of opinion that it will take a year with a competent staff to prove the six miles of land referred to in “A” portion.
(Signed) H. W. LAWS, M.I.M.M.