It is a great mistake to suppose that digging gold is easy work. As everybody knows, “nuggets of gold” are scarce. Most of the gold is found as fine grains, and requires great labour to separate it from the gravel, which in this case had to be hauled a great distance to the only place where water was to be found in the whole region. Here the water was pumped up from a deep well by horse power. This is the so-called alluvial gold. Gold in quartz has to be worked by mining and by costly crushing machines, in the construction of which a fortune must be spent before any pure ore can be secured. Most of the gold is now produced in the latter manner in Australia.
I watered my horse at the pump of the gold digger, said good-bye to the kind people, and continued my journey down along Fitzroy river.
The country along the lower part of this river is very rich in gold. Farther east, near Rockhampton, a whole gold-bearing mountain was discovered in 1884—Mount Morgan, which at present is the richest gold bed in the whole world, and has made Queensland the first gold-producing colony of Australia. It is also a remarkable fact that the gold here appears in an entirely new form. Mount Morgan, which is about 300 feet high, has been produced in the tertiary period by a hot spring, which may have resembled the geysers of Iceland or the hot springs of Yellowstone Park. It is formed of siliceous sinter, with some limonite and clayey substances, and the gold is distributed throughout the rocky mass. This discovery has made the owners immensely rich; the value of some of the original shares exceeding one and a half million pounds. One of my friends who bought a share for £1000 has now made out of this an income of more than £2000 a year. By boring it has been demonstrated that the gold increases in quantity with the depth, so that there seems to be no end of this fabulous wealth. No wonder that it has attracted the attention of speculators in every part of the world.
At the present time the weekly output of ore is 1500 tons. The average yield is 6 ounces per ton, and accordingly £36,000 of pure gold is produced per week.
This great find of gold is interesting, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. It shows that gold-bearing siliceous sinter can be the result of volcanic agencies, and that there is a hope that gold may yet be found in formations that have hitherto been regarded as worthless.
MOUNT MORGAN GOLD MINE.
CHAPTER XXVIII
A family of zoologists—Flesh-eating kangaroos—How the ant-eater propagates—Civilised natives—Weapons and implements—Civilisation and demoralisation.
