Australian up-country hotels are certainly not meant for rest. They are always either built of corrugated iron, which conveys every sound, or of wood, which is equally resonant. As a rule the partitions of the rooms do not reach to the top of the roof, so that the least noise can be heard from end to end of the building. There is always a door at one extremity, sometimes at both, besides a wide verandah, up and down which people stroll or lounge at pleasure. Every landlady appears to have half-a-dozen small children, who add their contribution to the day's noises in the shape of cries and shouts for 'mammy,' who, poor soul, is far too busy to attend to them herself or to spare anyone else to do so.
Tuesday, August 2nd.—The crushing-mills and the machinery have to be kept working all night, for of course the furnaces are never let out; and before daybreak all the noises of the works began, so that we were up early, and after breakfast went to the chlorination works with Mr. Trinear, the assayer.
Ti-Trees
The first thing shown us was the stone just as it came from the drays we had watched at work yesterday. This was speedily crushed into powder, baked, and mixed with charcoal. It then passed through another process within the powerful furnaces, which separated the ore from the rock and poured it forth, literally in a stream, golden as the river Pactolus. I never saw anything more wonderful than this river of liquid gold. A little phial held to the mouth of one of the taps became just a bottle of gold in solution. By adding hydrochlorate of iron the gold is precipitated in about seventy hours, and the water can be drained off pure as crystal, without a vestige of gold remaining in it. The gold itself is then mixed with borax, put through a further smelting-process, and ultimately comes out in solid nuggets, worth, according to the purity of the gold, from 300l. to 400l. each. The children were very pleased at being able to hold 1,200l. in their hands. Mr. Trinear told me that as the metal comes from the furnaces mixed with charcoal they often obtain as much as 75, and he had got as much as 86, per cent. of gold.
The Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company possess probably the most productive gold-mine in the world. The discovery of the gold-bearing rock, of which the whole mass of Mount Morgan is composed, was made while searching for copper ore. The gold at Mount Morgan is obtained from a lode of decomposed iron pyrites, partly underlying a bed of quartz, and at various points cropping up to the surface. The original discoverers of the ore, and the individuals who supplied the slender amount of capital with which the company commenced operations, have realised great fortunes.
At Mount Morgan the process known as chlorination has been developed on a larger scale than has elsewhere been attempted. It is described as follows:—
'The process of chlorination at Mount Morgan is a very interesting one, and would well repay a visit of inspection by any who are interested in the profitable and economic treatment of auriferous ores. The tailings, as they come from the battery or from the dry crusher, as the case may be, are first of all roasted in eight large furnaces, each with a capacity of putting through eight tons in twenty-four hours. The roasting of the ore in the first place is to free it from the waters of crystallisation and to burn all organic matter out of it. When it leaves the furnaces, it is turned out to cool in a large space, between the furnaces and the chlorinising barrels. When it has sufficiently cooled, it is taken on an inclined tramway to the hoppers connected with the chlorination barrels, in which the gas is generated by mingling chloride of lime with sulphuric acid. Water only is added, and the barrels, which are perfectly air-tight, are kept revolving until the gold is thoroughly chlorinated, or, to speak plainly, put into a fluid state. Each barrel contains a charge of about a ton of ore, and it is possible to get through twelve charges in the twenty-four hours.