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Pyrenees Gold Field

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is but a huge how in which dyke intrusions divide the stone on its foot-wall side, having spurs going out west from it in places. This how—this
receptacle for deposition of gold in payable form—is about 40 feet in maxi­mum width, is about 350 feet in length, measured at right angles to its pitch, and is about 2,500 feet in the direction of pitch, if measured from its higher part on the outcrop of the arch in the strata of Wilson's Hill. The channel would never have contained deposits from its fluids here, but for the presence of a tight part at lower depths. It is these tight parts, or other obstructions to circulation of mineralized fluids in the channels of the earth's crust, that cause mining to be so interesting. But for obstructions in some form or other all minerals in the crust, as we know it, would be too sparsely distributed to be payable. As with all such rich receptacles for gold, the Lord Nelson lode has evidently a large extent of unpayable country in its vicinity, although it is plain that this " situation " is only one in a series of such points of deposi­tion on the same channel—points whose relative positions have been arranged by the forces which corrugated and fractured the rock-beds. In following the Nelson line north, remains of shallow works are to be seen, none of which show more than scratches. This does not apply to the first quarter of a mile of country immediately north of Wilson's Hill, where nothing in mining has been done, although it is probable that another " situation," pitching south from the Queenslander group of mines in the vicinity of Sebastopol Hill, may be met with at some depth. The Lord Nelson North Company has a shaft down to 1,300 feet, I believe, immediately to the north of the Lord Nelson Company's area, and prospecting to the north of, or to much greater depths on, the Lord Nelson line of lode would possibly disclose another " situation " parallel in its pitch to the situation being worked in the " big " mine. The company has been prospecting west and south for the Lord Nelson line to the west of the latter's area. Sebastopol Hill is dotted with remains of works that yielded returns varying from pennyweights to ounces to the ton, the search having been apparently in many places for the richer parts only—tactics that mean waste of energy in the long run. The gold or bullion here varies in value from about 28s. to £4 per ounce, the average value being about £2 per ounce. I climbed down 280 feet of ladders in the West Queensland works, and noted that the formation occurs on the cap of and down the eastern side of an anticlinal arch, as it underlies, as usual, at about 45° to the west, and pitches south at about the same angle. There is the gold-slate and the dyke material present, and I was informed that in one lode of the group of lodes being worked (there being three near the West Queensland shaft, the middle one of which contains the most silver) the most valuable bullion is obtained at all times on the stone of
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