sandstone
layers, have had their circulation obstructed by quartz-vein floors.
Thus the veins on Galagher's shallow works, and in the Champion Hill,
are noted for the richness of their patches; and, indeed, all the rich
washdirt met with in the numerous gullies of the Mount owes its
richness in coarse and nuggety gold to the washed-away quartz veins of
the twisted parts of these gold-bearing ranges. Only a few fossickcrs
are now to be met with roaming about in quest of shallow or outcropping
patches. They manage, on the whole, to "keep going," and occasionally
we hear of vein-stuff yielding by dollying as much as 20 ounces to the
candle-box of stone ; all these patches being met with at points of
contact of a line of drainage—an indicator—with stone of the thin-vein
order, whose floor of resistance to the drainage of the indicator was
more nearly horizontal than vertical.
Just
below the Champion Hill, the Moorabool (known there as the Bungal)
flows south-easterly through country at one time evidently much higher
than at present, and representing the remains of the northern
continuation towards Egerton of the Mount Doran range. Here, beside
the river, are the mullock heaps of past mining efforts known as the
Shamrock and the Jenny Lind. Crushing mills were active in the long
past near both, but as soon as the outcropping situation of gold
deposit was apparently worked out, or to water-level, the effort
collapsed. Several subsequent attempts to mine have been made here
since the date of the first effort, the promoters of one of which fixed
a 5-head mill over the Shamrock lode a few years since. What is the
good of such a mill on ores the main condition of success in which is
treatment in bulk ? How many places have I seen during my rambles in
the gold-fields of our State, particularly in the fields of the
north-west, where millions and millions of tons of low-grade ore are
being carefully left for that coming miner who intends to treat mining
as he would any other business, and to mine bulk ore for low average
yields, giving ample returns to capital and labour, and the probability
of continuous payment to both for many generations to come ? Here, on
Mount Doran, there are many points on which 50-head mills at least
should be active. We have not yet recovered, f am afraid, from the
effect produced by the mining of millions in value of gold from
washdirt deposits, or by the mining of rich outcropping situations on
lode lines, met with here and There in the lode systems of the various
gold-fields of our State. The time has now arrived when the miner will
have to devote attention to ascertaining the reason why the gold has
been deposited in one part of a lode more than in another part, and all
experience teaches that the nature of most of our auriferous lode
systems and their gold deposits demands that bulk treatment for low
average yields shall be the main characteristic of the mining of the
future.
A
'little to the north-west of the Shamrock formation are the remains of
an iron mine, which failed principally, it is said, in consequence of
the cost of lime carriage. To the north of this, over the river, a
quartz formation, whose structure is the result of an extreme twist
strain to the corrugated rock layers, has been subjected to a lot of
surface scratching for returns said to have been very rich at times. I
noted the remains of many indicator drains in a splendid slate in the
mullock heaps, but the miners of the past appear to have ignored the
presence of these drains, and their relationship to the rich patches
of quartz met with. The old idea of regarding the association of
nuggety gold with a big lode evidently ruled here. It is hardly
reasonable to suppose that, had a large formation of quartz been met
with, it would have been of any value as a gold store, seeing that
there are such a number of almost flat vein "filter packs" intercepting
the drainage in the gold-slate of the line of lode. One would not
expect to find much residue in a filter placed immediately under
another filter, on the
