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10 MINING IN CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA.
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due
to the numerous upheavals of the granites and other eruptive as well as
less active Plutonic rocks. The only regular " line " of a lode
resembling those on Bendigo, Castlemaine, or Clunes, is situated about
four miles south-south-east of the central station, or Kate Hayes mine,
and that line is composed of a number of semi-detached blocks,
lenticular in form, each of which, however, contains a distinct
"pay-chute," or "shot of gold," all dipping south with a western
underlay varying from 29 degrees to 40 degrees.
GOLD-BEARING QUARTZ LODES.
The
line referred to is worked by the new Franklin, Homeward Bound, Omaha,
and other companies, and is located in Wolfs Creek, and, higher up the
same range, about a thousand yards west, another rich lode is in full
operation by the New York Hill Company, and their lode, with an eastern
underlay, would therefore form a junction with the first-described line
at a not very great depth, both lodes being synclinical in their
respective underlays. The strike of the New York lode varies, however,
as much as its underlay, the former being N. 25° E., on an average,
whilst at the south shaft the underlay is from 17-1/2 degrees only to
37 degrees. Perhaps the most regularly defined and best formed
continuous lode in California is that of the Idaho Company in this
vicinity, as will be seen from the following table, showing the
underlay, viz.:—
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The
dip of the cap of this lode to the south averages about 34 degrees,
which, with the vertical height of same at 600 feet, gives over 1,400
feet in length by an average width of 7 feet for this immense "pipe
vein" (American), or block of quartz. Its hanging wall is composed of a
dense green chloritic schist; the dyke of serpentine at the foot wall
renders the working of this lode very expensive, on account of the
serpentine swelling in open air, being largely impregnated with lime,
by means of which the timber is forced against the hard schist at the
hanging wall, and is rapidly destroyed. The quartz has that peculiar
seamy character so much liked by our Bendigo miners, and in these more
or less slaty laminations free gold, of various degrees of coarseness,
occurs, besides iron and copper pyrites. The richness of this lode from
its outcrop in Wolfs Creek, where it was held by the Eureka Company,
now " shut down " or abandoned, to the present Idaho boundary, was
clearly proved to me several times by the Messrs. Coleman Bros., part
owners and superintendents, exhibiting many specimens which, in large
pieces, contained more gold than quartz. The Californian quartz has, on
the whole, a very similar appearance to that in Victoria, being seamy
and bluish-white in color, but frequently it is stained by the green
carbonates of copper. The gold is both coarse and fine, the latter
predominating, however, in most lodes, and then it assimilates to that
found in the Maryborough and Stawell districts. Another but very narrow
lode is that of the Empire Company; in feet, there are here two
parallel veins dipping north; the east vein having been found very
profitable to work. (I saw, myself, ore* broken down at the 1,100-foot
level
* All quartz containing gold or silver is termed "ore" by the American miners.
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