This
lode has quartz richer in sulphides than that noticed on any other part
of the field ; and the remains of crude furnaces, built by early
miners, are to be seen near the shaft. From them I obtained lumps of
fused ore for sampling purposes. The Fiddler's Creek group of lodes is
in a, broad belt of gold-slate country. Its line represents a line of
main fracture of the field, the line being marked by dyke material,
sulphides, gold, and quartz. The floor, carrying thin veins of quartz,
shows patches of gold deposited at the points of intersection of narrow
channels, and there is free gold in the layers of slate. There has been
a great amount of loaming, to trace trails of gold to its source of
origin ; and the loamers, it is said, have located in the clay, over a
head floor, many patches of gold, said to be worth as much, in some
instances, as £100. The winter season is the loamer's season, for then
there is plenty of water.
Many
rich patches on " floors " have been obtained on the Fiddler's Creek
mine's belt of slate ; and the O'Donoghue family are now engaged
following a floor by a tunnel immediately to the south of the old mine
works. (See Plate VII.) I understand that this area has been applied
for again, in order to carry out the works commenced years sinee by the
Melbourne capitalists. There is every reason to think that a sound
effort, with suitable ore-treating appliances, would result in a,
successful mine.
East
of this point, on another range, the West of England Company has worked
out a long, narrow " make" of quartz for 1-oz. stone ; and
