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7
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same
channel of circulation. This line of vein quartz in gold-slate is
practically mill ore for a width of 50 feet, and the time will probably
come when a big mill will be at work on it. Just over the gully leading
from these old works (which are known as the Argyle) to the river, an
opening has been made in another run of gold-bearing slate permeated
with quartz veins, and here dish trials of the slate also showed a tail
of fine gold. This occurrence is evidently the western slope going off
an arch of the strata to form a V-shaped trough, the eastern slope of
which is, no doubt, the Argyle formation.
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Between
the Argyle formation and Egerton is a stretch of later volcanic
country, under which is a system of comparatively shallow washdirt
deposits, none of winch have been sampled. This volcanic covering on
the worn-down ranges between Mount Doran and Mount Egerton extends up
to a point near Mount Egerton itself, and, in addition to the washdirt
deposits beneath it, there are many lines of quartz lodes to be sampled
some day.
At
Mount Egerton mining is at a very low ebb. The mining here from early
times to the present has been similar to that of all our mining
centres. A favoured situation on a line of lode had become exposed by
surface wear, and the glitter of the gold in it attracted the attention
of washdirt diggers in the early fifties. As on Black Hill, Ballarat
East, areas only a few feet square were allowed each miner, and these
became amalgamated in due course. Then Mr. Learmonth bought out the lot
; in course of time a syndicate bought him out; and then came the turn
of the companies. The Egerton Company—the first—allowed the Black Horse
Company to have about 600 feet in length, north and south, of its area,
in return for a nominal royalty on all gold, at a part of the line
immediately north of the crown of the hill on which gold was discovered
in the first place. From what I can learn of the early efforts on
surface quartz, I do not think they resulted in
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