MERETO EEL: WEREII LOCALITY
above: trenching a gold mineral system at Gladys prospect, November 2001
The Mereto Concession covers 20 square kilometres in the northern part of the East Tigray goldfield.
The company has carried out numerous surveys over the property in the past five years, the most
recent in April 2005. Prospecting has been carried out from scratch, starting with virgin
territory and working up through the stages of sediment sampling, soil sampling, and rock
sampling. There have been two substantial additions of ground to the east and south of the original licence area, the most recent being the acquisition of part of the Ashanti Concession area. Regional scale gold in soil anomalies
have been outlined on the property at 1:10000 scale with strike lengths up to four kilometres
in length.
One of these, discovered by Sheba during a soil survey, comprises the sub-anomalies
Eleanor-Gladys-Katrina,
and strikes for 1800 metres. It has been explored in the centre by a series of 131 pits.
Six gold in rock anomalies
have been discovered under the central part of the soil anomaly and their
morphology suggests a NNW trending
dextral shear zone with gold values concentrated in NNE-trending dilation zones. The central structure,
Gladys C, was trenched along strike
for 160 metres in four 40-metre apart trenches. The structure comprises a mineralised envelope with grades as follows:
Trench MT1:
0.52 g/t over 9 metres or 0.9 g/t over 2m: best metre 0.9 g/t
Trench MT2:
0.85 g/t over 16 metres or 5.7 g/t over 2m: best metre: 9.8 g/t
Trench MT3
0.83 g/t over 15 metres or 3.1 g/t over 2m: best metre: 6.0 g/t
Trench MT8:
0.64 g/t over 16 metres or 2.9 g/t over 2m: best metre: 3.2 g/t
The gold mineralisation is hosted by north, NW and NNE-trending structures, which appear to be shear/fracture zones. Gold mineralisation is spatially associated with quartz veinlets and felsic dykes and is commonly found in phyllitic rocks, close to the contact of a large microgranite dyke. Regional alteration occurs as fine to coarse spotting
by carbonate and sulphide minerals covering many square kilometres, and locally kaolinisation,
sulphidation and silicification is present with gold. Arsenic is a highly anomalous element found in soil and may be an indicator of hydrothermal mineralisation. Arsenic anomalies are roughly coincidental with gold, though not at detail scale. Localised lead, zinc and copper anomalies may sometimes occur with gold.
The soil anomaly Miranda is located about 1 km east of Gladys. It was trenched by Ashanti Goldfields in 1996 and returned a value of 1.1 g/t over 48 metres (including 20m @ 1.9 g/t). This gold intersection links southwards to the Unko mineralised trend.
above: the Gladys gold occurrence showing area stripped of soil and containing gold lodes, November 2001
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