Iron,
in rust form (known as oxide), or in sulphide form (mundic), is very
plentiful all through the country examined, and, as on the Ballarat
field, I saw sulphide of lead (galena) in association with the gold in
several favoured positions.
As
already remarked, all the mining of Harrietville has been confined to
the riches of those favoured positions of deposit whose golden tops
were to be seen in outcrop, or were located just below the surface by
loamers. All the situations opened represent simply the most elevated
(that is, nearest the surface) members of many systems of such
situations which extend in series to greater depths than picks will
ever reach, and for lengths of many miles in the exposed eilurian and
ordovician rock formations, and also, no doubt, through many hundreds
of miles of these formations which are said to be under the plains in
the north of our State.
Being
steep mountain country, with much decomposed slate and sandÂstone on
the surface in the form of loam, but few lode formations outcrop; all,
however, have shed traces of their wealth as their caps were slowly
lowered in the surface wear of ages. Hundreds of feet, perhaps
thousands, of surface, with its slate, sandstone, and lodes, have been
worn away, and in the decomposed country showing as loam, a thin trail
of gold is met with, extending from the line of the lode to the foot of
its range. This is really part of the gold once stored in the heights
of lode, since worn down—gold scattered down the range attached to
pieces of quartz or slate, and freed as Buch vehicles were decomposed
into loam and clay. It is these trails from worn-down situations of
deposit that have brought into existence the loamers, who take an
active share in the mining of this part of our State. They are
intelligent, patient, painstaking, and of great endurance. The history
of most of the mines in these mountains runs back to a time when a
loaming party located a gold trail on a mountain side, and followed it
by dish sampling to a point where the gold was found to be lower in the
loam, then in the clay below the loam, then in the cap of a lode
embedded in gold-slate country. As this gold has been shed from
worn-down parts of a favoured situation, only part of that situation
remained intact in the lode ; a trail would, accordingly, lead up to a
small deposit only in some instances, and in others to a golden
situation into which the surface wear had not gone far. Although these
mountain rangers are adepts at finding trails of gold, and at following
them to their source, they have not devoted much attention to a study
of the relationship these points of rich deposition bear to each other,
or of their length and depth. They have located many lines of lodes,
containing many favoured situations, near the surface ; some of these
have been opened, but the great majority of such points have not even
been found. Even the location of lines of lodes in these loam-covered
mountains is, however, a great achievement.
"Remnants
of mining plants are scattered over the area under notice, some of
which are situated in such out-of-the-way places that one wonders how
the machinery was taken in. There are at least twelve crushing mills in
the 10 miles square visited, four or.five of which are in use. Mining
at present is mostly in the hands of an English concern known as the
New Options Limited, of London, and under the management of Mr. Thomas
Pascoe. Here works are being carried on in the quartz formations of
four distinct systems of lodes, the system nearest the town being known
as the Johnston. Extensive operations in tunnel works are in progress
on a great wing of quartz, associated with a big dyke formation, the
whole belonging
