introduced
without difficulty. The Echunga fields were discovered in 1852, but
gave employment to a small number of gravel-miners only.
Cement-crushing has been carried on in this district, but with little
success. The Ulooloo gold-field contains some auriferous deposits
composed of clay, sand, and shingle, forming banks of from six to
twenty feet along the Ulooloo Creek. Water, however, is here very
scarce.
In
the northern territory, which extends from the Sta-pleton to the
Driffield rivers, the auriferous deposits have been explored for a
distance of about one hundred miles in length by twenty miles in width.
There are no drift deposits. The alluvial gold occurs in small gullies
and ravines, and occasional rich pockets are found.
New Zealand.—Gold
was discovered in New Zealand in 1842. The alluvial deposits occur
chiefly in the South Island, in the districts of Otago, Westland, and
Nelson, where mining operations are carried on over an area of almost
twenty thousand square miles. The detritus is found in the beds of the
rivers, in large deposits of gravel from three hundred to five hundred
feet deep, and in the sands along the sea-shore. The gold-drifts in
Otago rest on the denuded surface of the parent rock, while in the
Westland district they lie on tertiary rocks of marine origin. Fully
two-thirds of the gold returned from this country is obtained from
alluvial mining. The extent to which work is carried on may be judged
from the fact that the miners have constructed over five thousand miles
of water-races, with attendant tail-races and dams, at a cost
approximating £300,000; this is independent of the government
water-races and dams, which have cost £450,000.
Ground-sluicing
is practised, and in some instances hydraulic mining has been
introduced with heads of water from eighty to one hundred feet. The
government has a tunnel eleven feet by seven feet, five thousand seven
hundred and forty-four feet long, in course of construction,
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