The Cape Ray East Property is comprised of 747 contiguous claims, 564 claims which are 100% Benton Resources Inc. (“Benton”) owned through direct staking and 183 claims subject to a binding Letter of Intent (“LOI”) with Cornerstone Capitol Resources Inc. (“Cornerstone”), whereby Benton can acquire up to a 75% interest in Cornerstone’s claims containing the Windowglass Hill (“WGH”) and the 51 Zone deposits by paying $125,000 cash, issuing 155,000 shares and completing $2,000,000 in work expenditures over a 4 year period. The property is located approximately 10 km north of the town of Port aux Basques, southwestern Newfoundland, at the southernmost point and continues in a northeast and easterly direction for approximately 80 km. Access to the property is by float plane or helicopter and a gravel road near the community of Isle aux Mort provides access to the southernmost claims. A series of registered ATV trails allow access to the majority of the remaining claims.
Cornerstone recently announced the results of an initial National Instrument 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate for the WGH and 51 Zone deposits with the highlights below:
- 51 Zone -- Inferred resources of 530,000 tonnes grading 6.10 g/t Au and 15.86 g/t Ag containing 103,943 ounces of gold and 270,253 ounces of silver
- WGH - Inferred resources of 1,810,000 tonnes grading 1.77 g/t Au and 11.28 g/t Ag containing 103,001 ounces of gold and 656,415 ounces of silver
- Mineralization is relatively shallow at a maximum of 270 metres vertically below surface for the 51 Zone and 140 m for WGH
- Opportunities exist to upgrade and expand the mineral resources
The Cape Ray East Property straddles the Cape Ray Fault Zone which forms a structural boundary between the Dunnage Zone to the northwest and the Gander Zone to the southeast, two of four tectonostratigraphic zones into which the geology of Newfoundland has been subdivided. The zone is 100 km long and several hundred metres wide and is comprised of highly strained rocks. The most significant mineralized zones discovered to date make up the Cape Ray Gold Deposit (comprising the #04, #41 and #51 Zones) in which gold occurs mainly in galena and chalcopyrite-rich, fault-fill quartz breccia veins hosted by graphitic schists of the Windsor Point Group. Elsewhere along the fault zone, significant gold mineralized zones occur in pyrite-rich, fault-filled quartz breccia veins (at the Big Pond Prospect); in extensional, subhorizontal quartz veins hosted by the Windowglass Hill Granite (Windowglass Hill Prospect); and as fault-fill quartz veins and strongly pyritized, iron-rich sedimentary rocks at or close to the contact between the Cape Ray Igneous Complex and the Windsor Point Group (Isle aux Morts Prospect).
Work completed by Benton to date has included several property visits via helicopter to assess the more prominent areas defined by previous exploration. These include trench samples which returned 56.8 g/t Au and 18.7 g/t Au. Historic heavy metal concentrate (“HMC”) till samples have returned values up to 9.9 g/t Au and historic HMC stream sediment samples have returned 71.0 g/t and 24.4 g/t Au. An initial prospecting program in the summer of 2012 returned samples grading up to 58.9 g/t Au and 11.9 g/t Au and 148 g/t Ag both in large quartz boulders. A follow-up 2-day prospecting program by Benton management returned a sample with 191.2 g/t Au and 888.0 g/t Ag in the same area.
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