Nov 24 2010
Rockland Minerals Corp. (TSX VENTURE:RL) has announced the first assay results from the recently completed 1,525 meter, 12 hole diamond drill program at the Schefferville Gold Project, Québec.
The Company rushed-assayed 2 samples from hole RL10-17. These first two samples of half-sawed, BTW diameter drill core encountered grades of 6.63 g/t Au and 9.02 g/t Au in two separate intervals.
Rockland is earning a 55% interest on part of the property from Western Troy Capital Resources Inc. The Western Troy claims are in 10 distinct blocks staked over known gold showings originally discovered in the mid-1980's by Québec government geologists. Many of the claims are contiguous and intermingled with Rockland's original gold claims, optioned from E.D. Black, where Rockland is earning a 100% interest. The 2010 drilling program was conducted on Western Troy claims.
The early Rockland results confirm gold grades from the area that were discovered by Western Troy in 2009. Hole RL10-17 is located in the main "Arséne" showing, roughly 1,700 metres to the north of hole WT09-04 which encountered 5.56 g/t gold over a core length of 7.11 meters in the "Baleine Rouge Central" zone. Rockland is awaiting assays on the remaining samples from Hole RL10-17, and from the remaining 11 holes of the program. The balance of the samples from the drilling have been shipped via rail from Schefferville to the ALS-Chemex prep lab in Val d'Or, Québec, and will be reported when received.
Rockland geologists selected these samples on the basis of the presence of arsenopyrite, which can be seen in numerous zones in the 2010 drill core. The presence of arsenopyrite is widely recognized as an indicator of microscopically disseminated gold mineralization in this camp. The samples had about 1% arsenic, and roughly 4% total sulfur, which confirms high gold-arsenic values with relatively low sulfide concentrations. The hand-sample textures strongly suggest replacement of previously-formed pyrrhotite (pyrite) by arsenopyrite during a gold-arsenic mineralization event which predates later, cross-cutting Pb-Zn mineralization.
Rockland geologists believe that these first samples will fall within broader zones of disseminated gold-arsenic mineralization, when all the assays from the Fall 2010 drilling are received. Gold mineralization in the Schefferville area was only discovered in the mid-1980's by systematic Québec government regional lake-bottom sediment sampling. The microscopically divided gold, associated with arsenic, does not readily form placer deposits, so the old-time prospectors missed these gold occurrences with their gold pans.
George F. Sanders, P.Geo, a director of the Company, is the Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 responsible for the technical content of this news release.