A few stories were given as connected with the discovery of certain gold localities. A shepherd was the first who brought gold to Melbourne from the Pyrenees. A boy at one of Dr. Barker’s huts, Mount Alexander, is said to have brought in some shining stuff which he had found to his father, and that originated a gold field. Gold districts have been made known by holes being dug for posts. A horse’s hoof, or the wheel of a dray, unfolds to view a glittering lump. A bullock driver spied a nugget at the foot of a tree; he scratched up a handful of beauties, and the gully was soon known as the rich Eagle Hawk. The celebrated Peg Leg Gully yielded its gold through the surfacing of a man whose wooden legs forbade him sinking. Part of Friar’s Creek became an Ophir through some passing shearers who washed some of its sands in a tin plate. Golden Gully, near there, gave up its hidden wealth through a man idly pulling up a root of grass, under which was a lovely nest of nuggets. Mr. Gibson is said to have been scratching with his knife on the banks of the Bendigo, and accidentally turned up a piece of gold. Telling his men, they feasted awhile by themselves upon this dainty repast. But I had another story given me, which I must tell, although conscious that there is a fearful scandal in it. Mr. Gibson’s shepherd there told his wife privately of the treasure. She told it in the strictest confidence of secresy to another woman, who conferred a similar favour upon a female neighbour of hers, who might in the fulness of her heart have bound a friend in the same ties of anti-revelation, and so it went on, I suppose, till a man knew it, for it soon got blazed about far and near.
GEOLOGY OF THE DIGGINGS.
When a man of observation walks over the Gold Fields, his attention is arrested by the following facts.
1. The prevalent rocks are observed to be of a crystalline, or what is called igneous, character; as, granites of all varieties, quartz, mica, slate, felspar, sienite &c. Some felspar is seen decomposed into a soft white finger-staining mineral, or into fine porcelain clay. At the “Gap” of the river Macquarie the sienite is flanked by precipitous silicious slates. The Mount Alexander range is of a granitic character, and the beds of the streams running from it, on the Bendigo road, are filled with huge boulders of granite on a granite floor, containing parallel veins of crystallized felspar, having usually a north and south direction. No detritus of other rocks is found on the granite by the “Porcupine.” Some of the rocks bear fantastic resemblance to Beehives, Logan stones, and Scandinavian Tumuli. Granite is the bed of the Macquarie at Bathurst, and the base of the Mullion range, near which were the first diggings of New South Wales. The quartz is of all kinds; black, white, yellow, pink, green, red, spotted, streaked, mosaic, porous, fibrous, clinker like, and crystallized. Carbon makes it black; copper or chlorine, green; oxide of iron, red or brown; manganese, rose colour. The crystals are hexaedron pyramids, single or double, of different sizes and degrees of transparency. Some rise from the surface like wedges, having a singular appearance. The prisms are triangular, quadrilateral or pentagonal; some crystals have others attached to their sides. Veins of black quartz are observed with the centre very vesicular. Carious quartz, or swimming stone, is not common. The granulated quartz or grindstone schist has often minute transparent crystals in cavities. From a hole in Golden Gully, Bendigo, I obtained a specimen of soft sandstone, with most exquisitely beautiful veins of crystallized quartz running in all directions.
2. The Crystalline rocks are observed gradually changing into what is called the Sedimentary rocks, as slates. Such a transition from the crystalline to the laminated form is by insensible degrees. The experience of the miner is often opposed to the theories of geologists. He cannot help noticing the different kinds of slates, as presenting proof of their being transmutations of, or some among the many kinds of developement in, crystalline rocks. There are slates as amorphous looking as any Huttonian can desire. Others are so silicious, as to be denominated by the New South Wales geologists, Quartzites. On the Bell’s creek the clay slate changes into jasper. The chlorite slate of Ophir is so full of quartz veins, and dykes and bosses of quartz, as to be called by Sir T. L. Mitchell, Quartz iferons schist. Instances are numerous of slate with embedded quartz, and quartz entangling slate. At the cathedral rock, near Specimen Hill, Bendigo, numerous veins of chlorite slate are seen running unharmed and unchanged amidst that huge block of so called, igneous rock. The same specimen of quartz has exhibited in different parts not only different colours, but the clinker, the calcined, and the transparent conditions. The Rev. W. B. Clarke, of Sydney, hints at the probability of quartz, greenstone, basalt, and slates, by the influence of segregation, chemical affinity, galvanic or other forces, being “derived from the same original source, and indefinitely varied in the order of their arrangements and relations to each other at different intervals.” Mr. Clarke’s observations on the Diggings’ ground, would seem rather to have confounded his geological creed. The absence of ordinary stratification, even in the holes, is a remarkable feature. The character of stuff through which we have to go on the tops of hills resembles that in the gullies. Though much of the soil bears evidence of diluvial action, yet a considerable portion clearly results from the decomposition of the rocks near. The great irregularity of mineral beds in the holes, no two holes being alike, would not present the idea of gentle depositions, nor are we warranted to assume volcanic dislocation. Such fantastic changes in the order and depths of these mineral beds, were compared by a diggings’ friend to the alternations of the eight notes of music in different bars.
Our slates in Victoria are elongated, amorphous, crystalline, contorted, laminated, with or without cleavage, red, brown, white, blue, and chocolate color. Some are very talcose and soapy. In others grains or streaks like rainbows are seen. Mundic or Iron pyrites’ crystals are found in dark, friable, unctious slate of Forest creek. At Miles’ creek, Bendigo, are fine curvillinial lines in red slates. Near the old square, Forest creek, and beside Fryer’s creek is some splendid blue book slate, resembling the leaves of a book. The cleavage of the slates is evidently made by magnetic agency. Sometimes, as at Bendigo, the cleavage planes preserve a true parallelism while passing through contorted hard slate.
3. The rocks of the diggings are observed in successive bands of various colors and compositions with a great vertical inclination. This is the same as in other gold countries. Intelligent miners are much struck with this fact of rock succeeding rock over a country side by side, and all with a perpendicular direction. The slate has some odd changes of position, influenced doubtless by local disturbances. On the road from Bendigo to Bullock creek, the rock may be seen in one place dipping 80° to the east, a little further 80° to the west, then 10° to the west, &c. In Iron bark gully I noticed in a square yard of space the following different position, in some blue roofing slate; 45° to N E, 30° to Es 70° to N. The Pipe clay, which, being silicate of alumina, is decomposed from siliceous slates and granites, has, like the neighbouring rocks, this same vertical inclination.
4. The ridges of rocks are observed to run nearly in a North and South direction. This is the same as in all gold countries, and establishes the theory of terrestrial magnetic agency.
5. There is a remarkable abundance of iron. Crystals of iron pyrites are common. The carburet of iron or emery, like iron sand, is always associated with gold. Oxydulous masses of iron form a precipitous waterfall of 60 feet near Oaky Creek, New South Wales. Ferruginous, or iron bearing, conglomerate, overhangs the river at Ophir. Auriferous bands of argillaceous iron ore traverse the limestone of Bungonia. Large nodules of peroxide of iron, and magnetic iron ore of all kinds, are taken out of our Victoria Diggings. The burnt stuff, or burnt quartz of the miners, is a ferruginous cement binding quartz pebbles. There is no need of referring this compound to volcanic or electric fire. Chemical action with moisture will make any mixture hard enough. Roman cement when dried is not very soft. In the Ballarat holes the “Burnt Quartz” has been found ten feet thick; it is less at the Mount, and less still at Bendigo, though on some Bendigo hills it occurs six or eight feet.