APPENDIX.
As some may be interested in a fuller account of gold-digging than the limited scope of the personal narrative allowed, the following particulars are added.
In the Bendigo district, the shafts are generally 10 to 15 feet deep, through loose gravel, and sometimes through sandy earth that requires only the spade in digging. For raising the stuff from the bottom, rudely constructed winches are employed in the deeper holes, and, for the shallower, simple swing bars, which are merely one stout pole balanced horizontally on the forked end of another set upright, a counterbalance, rather in excess of the weight to be raised, making the operation of lifting both quick and easy. At Tarrangower, the usual depth was much the same as at Bendigo: there was, in the parts wrought when I was there, a thick crust of hard pebbly concrete to go through, at which unskilled workmen hammered in vain. At the neighbouring diggings of Maryborough, Burnt Creek, and Victoria Hill, there was a stratum similar, but more formidable, and bearing marks of fire and partial fusion, so that even heavy hammer-picks made no impression on them. Steel gads were used, struck by heavy malls, but weeks of patient toil were required to pierce a thickness of a few feet. Gunpowder was sometimes employed, but it shook the ground too much, and was generally condemned. At “Hard Hill,” in Burnt Creek, I was one afternoon crossing the line of holes, when a man as white as any miller came out of one for a breath of fresh air. We spoke. He had been a month already in sinking ten feet, three of which were crust, and he expected to be another month in bottoming on the pipe clay. I looked down and could hardly distinguish the present bottom through the floating grit that hung smoke-like within. The ground down in the flat, where the sinking was easier, was not yielding even bare bread to the few still lingering about it, and discouraging reports—common on the diggings even in the best of times—coming from Tarrangower and Maryborough at the time, those thus labouring on the “Hill” not knowing but that they might remove only to fare worse, were for the time resting satisfied with their hard pickings so long as they could live by them. In the first days of the diggings, men would not work ground if the gold was not plentiful enough to be seen and picked out with the fingers, but latterly they became, and now are, very well pleased if they can but keep themselves decently, the generally long-deferred hope of finding a nugget, or a pocket of grains, making them bear with discomforts that would be felt as more than irksome under ordinary wage service.
In Bendigo, at first only the pipe-clay surface, and a few inches of the earthy gravel overlying it, were considered worthy of notice. After a long interval the ground was re-opened, and a foot more of the earthy gravel removed and washed and found to pay very well—as things then went. Later on, as men’s views further modified, it was considered that there was gold enough in the whole mass of earth above the pipe clay to remunerate, if adequate means were employed to separate it. Parties with small capital combined, made dams and water sluices, and washing the earth wholesale, reaped a profit. Where the gold lay mixed with clay however, a process termed “puddling” required to precede the sluicing and the cradle-washing. In the case of individual diggers with small means, the puddling is done with a spade in an ordinary tub, under three feet in diameter, the stuff being swilled and stirred until the clay is all dissolved and washed away, but when the quantities are considerable, as in workings belonging to a company, the tub used might be ten or twelve feet in diameter, and five or six feet deep, sunk in the ground, with an upright shaft in the centre, fitted with projecting blades as in an ordinary pug mill, and made to revolve by one or two horses yoked to arms projecting from the top of the shaft. If the gold is very fine, it is necessary to renew the water frequently to allow of the fine grains settling to the bottom.
The cradle in ordinary use for washing is in shape much the same as the piece of homely furniture it takes its name from. It is furnished with rockers, and when at work has its head raised a few inches higher than the foot, for the due escape of the water used. A quantity of stuff from the puddling tub is placed in a hopper at the cradle head, and a stream of water turned to flow quietly and regularly upon it, at the same time that the rocking is commenced, the smaller particles and with them the gold, thus set in motion, are washed down between the bars, into a compartment beneath, and from it into a second, and thence down to the discharge opening along the bottom of the box, across which at short intervals are check bars about an inch deep, which intercept the gold as it is rocked along close on the bottom, but which allow the lighter sand and the water to flow over. A careless or inexperienced hand, by pouring water in too freely, and neglecting to keep up the rocking motion, would let the gold away with the gush.
The final process is performed in a shallow, circular tin dish, about four inches deep, two feet diameter at top, and about eighteen inches at bottom. Into it is put the mixture of sand and gold, removed at intervals from behind the check bars in the cradles, then the washer balancing it in his hands by means of ear handles under the rim outside, dips it in a pool and lifts in it as much water as sets the stuff aswimming when swilled and shaken, then allows the gold to sink through the sand to the bottom by reason of its greater weight. The surface stuff is then laved out, and the process of swilling, shaking, and laving repeated until only the gold remains.
For ease and convenience the drifts and chambers underground are made in the pipe clay below the gold level, a thickness of an inch or less being left, coating the gravel of the roof, in which when sufficient breadth has been bared, examination is made with knife and candle for gold, which is found in greatest quantity on the surface of and immediately above the clay.