except the Mysore mine, which was working to a small extent.  In February, 1883, the Nundydroog mine was ordered to be closed, and almost every other mine was in a state of collapse.  Caretakers were put in and only a little work done.  Early in 1884, when only twelve or thirteen thousand pounds of their capital were left, the Mysore shareholders were convened.  Some were for closing at once and dividing the remaining capital, but, acting on the advise of Messrs. John Taylor and Sons, of 6, Queen Street Place, London, it was, fortunately for the province of Mysore, determined to spend 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.