Clunes Gold Field

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	has been done to test this class of ore on the Clunes field, and it is probable that large bodies of it worthy of attention exist to the north and the south of the deep workings. All the lode systems of our State are more or less associated with dyke material. Here, at Clunes, the plans of old workings show a dyke from the 1,000 to the 1,400-ft. levels, and, judging, by the quantities of dyke material also to be seen in the mullock heaps, it must have been more or less intimately associated with the different lode formations throughout the entire mile. The apex of the arch containing the lode system of Clunes forms a long hill, whose sides slope gently to the west, towards a parallel range of the same rock-beds ; to the east, to the main ancient valley of the district; to the north, into a valley tributary to this main ancient valley; and to the south, into another tributary valley. These ancient valleys have been filled with flows of basalt, which now form plain-like stretches of good agricultural land, through which the apex of the arch of the lodes outcrops. It is said that gold was discovered by a prospector named Esmond, in July, 1851, and that our State's mining commenced in Clunes ; for it was not until some weeks after Esmond's discovery that the Ballarat field was opened. Gold had really been found years before this, both in Ballarat and Clunes, by the pioneer wool-growing people who tended their sheep on the hills, but it appeal's to have been Esmond who made known its presence, and thus caused the rush for it. Mr. Pi. H. Bland, late manager for the Port Phillip and Colonial Gold Mining Company, in a pamphlet* published in 1890, gives the Mowing returns from the Port Phillip and Clunes companies' mines from the vear 1857 to 1881:—



	Other portions of the field than that worked by Mr. Bland's company turned out much gold, both from the wash-dirt and from the lodes, and the grand total in values from all sources from the year 1857 to 1901 is, as stated above, £5,000,000. When the works went below the formations of the first saddle and ts legs, the following advice, tendered by Mr. Bland, might, had it been followed, have made Clunes continue to be a great centre of mining :— 11 can only repeat here what I have often stated, that the upper levels He decidedly worthy of exploration, but this work should proceed simultaneously with sinking in the north shaft, and I always considered it a *" History of the Port Phillip and Colonial Gold Mining Co., in connexion with the Olunes Mine." F. W. I Siren and Co., Ballarat. 4208. B .

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