The Subterranean World

by G. Hartwig

GOLD-WASHING IN AUSTRALIA.

The great social disorganisation which distinguished the first few years of the Australian gold discoveries has long since passed away, together with much of the excitement natural to a transition state. Order now universally prevails, and the occupations of life are pursued with as much regularity as in the oldest States. The growth of the colony, which scarcely thirty years since was a mere unknown waste, is not the least marvellous of the many marvels that have been worked by gold. In the year 1851 the population of the province was 77,345 persons, of whom 28,143 were located in Melbourne. In 1860, it had already increased to 462,000, and probably the next few years will find it augmented to a million, while Melbourne already rivals our larger cities in size and wealth.

The wonderful discoveries in California and Australia having made gold the all-absorbing topic of the day, it is not surprising that new Eldorados were now eagerly sought for wherever the geological formation of a country held out the hope of similar treasures.

Fresh and highly-productive gold-fields have, within the last few years, been opened in British Columbia, and, still further to the north, in the Arctic wilds of the infant colony of Stikeen. Numerous diggers are at work in New Zealand, and in the deserts to the north of the Cape. A system of auriferous veins has been discovered in North Wales; the county of Sutherland, the Ultima Thule of our isle, claims to be ranked among the gold-producing regions; and numerous adventurers are on their way to the frozen deserts of Lapland, where the glittering metal is said to abound in the basin of the Ivalo.

At no former period of the world’s history has gold been so eagerly sought for over such extensive areas in all parts of the globe; never have larger quantities of the precious metal been added to the accumulated hoards of ages. No doubt this vast influx of wealth has in many cases been productive of evil consequences; but its beneficial influence upon the progress and happiness of mankind far outweighs the injury it may too frequently have caused by rousing the worst passions of our nature. An astonishing impetus has already been given to commerce and industry; competence and wealth have been diffused over many lands; deserts have been transformed into growing empires; and a vast continent, long despised as the convict’s prison, has been raised in the social scale to a height almost commensurate with its geographical importance.

The mineral formations in which gold originally occurs are the crystalline primitive rocks, the compact transition rocks, and the trachytic and trap rocks, which, by their disintegration have, in the course of ages, enriched large alluvial tracts with particles of the precious metal. Torrents and rivers washed them down from the heights, along with the worthless rubbish of their original matrix, and finally deposited them in the gulleys and ravines of the lower grounds. Hence the alluvial territories have always been the chief sources of auriferous wealth, and this circumstance explains how countries which at one time abounded in gold have long since ceased to be of importance. For the comparative ease with which the metal could generally be obtained by digging and washing, and the greed which stimulated the researches of thousands, could not fail to exhaust even the richest placers. No one now dreams of searching for gold in the sands of the Pactolus or of the Golden Tagus; no modern Argonaut sails to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece; the fields of Bohemia are no longer ransacked by gold-seekers; and a like fate probably awaits many of our modern Eldorados.

A marked difference between the gold deposits of Australia and California deserves to be noticed. The gold of California is found in the midst of, or contiguous to, the existing great mountain ranges, amidst regions of peaked, jagged, irregular crests, and upheaved and distorted strata, the undoubted effects of internal convulsions. It has not, however, selected as its resting-place the smooth levels and hanging slopes of the contiguous hills. The metal, ground finer and finer as it is carried forward by the torrents that year after year tear up the river-beds, finally settles in the form of fine flakes or dust along the banks and at the bottoms of the great streams of the country. Hence the Californian diggers generally find the drifts of the precious metal in the strata immediately under the surface, either associated with the subsoil, or in the holes or ‘pockets’ of water-worn rocks.

In Victoria the most prolific gold-fields are in regions where the old formations are pierced by igneous rocks which have flowed from extinct volcanoes; and some of the richest alluvial deposits have been found on the pipe-clay bottom of flat, wide-spread plains, or settled in great subterranean gutters, under broad, elongated slopes, which the miner can reach only by sinking his shaft through stratum after stratum, from fifty to three hundred feet down, before he reaches the buried treasure. The inference necessarily is that much of the gold-drift of Australia is of an earlier origin than the deposits of California, which are the products of the existing mountain ranges, and therefore will be exhausted in a comparatively brief period.

In Victoria, not seldom three distinct auriferous deposits, the result of successive upheavals and depressions, occur in the same locality; and the miner finds, in the course of his working, a first, second, and third bottom, the last being always on the solid and unmoved palæozoic rock, from which all the gold has been derived.