low-grade
ore, which can be easily worked, and a 25-head mill on 4 dwt. stuff
would probably return at least 20 per cent, of its output of gold
as-interest on the necessary capital.
Various
other outcrops of the same group of lodes are to be seen further north.
The line passes at Dereel through a swamp, which is said to be full of
wash-dirt, too wet, however, for windlass or whim appliances. Around
the swamp are sand hills and terraces with extensive deposits • of
ferruginous cements; and still further north may be seen, at a place
called Good Friday Flat, many remains of old workings by small parties
of miners on quartz lodes, still on the Monarch line.
Further
north through Dereel, past an 8-head mill owned by the Honorable Agar
Wynne and party, the line of the Monarch group of lodes is well marked
by some shallow mining, from which results varying from an ounce to a
pennyweight have been obtained. These mullock heaps are met with up the
side of a high range up to the height of about 2,000 feet above
sea-level, or 1,400 feet above Eokewood, and 8 miles to the south. Here
are the remains of mining works opened about 42 years ago. This high
crown of a main range bounds the Misery Creek on its south-eastern
side, and the surface material, from its ridge down the slope of
half-a-mile to the creek, has all been removed and crushed for returns
averaging, it is said, 25 dwts. to the ton. This surface material is
not wash-dirt in the ordinary acceptance of that term, but broken
quartz with sharp angles. It consists of broken outcrops of almost
vertical lodes, and of wing-like occurrences of quartz belonging to
them. A crushing mill was erected here in early times, and the many
open cuts on the quartz formations show how wide-spread the effort was,
aud how small the area of each party. It is said that some of the wing
" makes" of quartz yielded as high as 10 ozs. to the ton, but if the
whole system of lodes here would yield an average of 4 dwts. it would
well pay the capital necessary to work it. A Ballarat party, not long
since, raised 43 tons of quartz from old shallow works for a yield of 7
dwts. to the ton, but the absence of a mill on the ground rendered its
mining unprofitable. Another party mined 10 tons from a formation of
this line in Misery Creek itself, for returns of 6 dwts. to the ton.
Numerous tunnel works and shallow shaft openings are to be seen still
further north on the same line; from them crushings equal to 7 dwts. to
the ton are said to have been obtained. Crossing the whole group of
formations is a lode, known as a " cross " lode, from which crushings
of two lots of 10 tons each returned 10 dwts. to the ton, without
including the "clean out," that is the sulphide, &c, from the
blankets. These cross lodes are a feature of the whole of this
district, being present in Rokewood, in Pitfield, in Berringa, and in
Newtown, near Scarsdale. The well-known Jubilee mine, at Newtown, is
working a cross lode, but with this exception I know of no others being
worked. There is one which crosses north ot the Birthday area, at
Berringa (opposite the Kangaroo Hotel); its outcrop displays sulphide,
and tests from
