The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED IN AUSTRALIA.

At a date still later than the discovery of gold in California, the same precious metal was discovered in Australia. The cut on the following page gives a view of the place where it was first found, in the county of Bathurst, not far from Sydney in New South Wales. It is worthy of note that we owe the discovery of gold in Australia to the high state of geological science. Sir R. Murchison, in his address to the London Geographical Society in 1844, alluded to the possibly auriferous character of the great eastern chain of Australia, being led thereto by his knowledge of the auriferous chain of the Ural, and by his examination of Count Strzelecki’s specimens, maps and sections. Some of Sir R. Murchison’s observations having found their way to the Australian papers, a Mr. Smith, at that time engaged in some iron works at Berrima, was induced by them in the year 1849 to search for gold, and he found it. He sent the gold to the colonial government, and offered to disclose its locality on payment of five hundred pounds sterling. The government, however, not putting full faith in the statement, and being, moreover, unwilling to encourage a gold fever without sufficient reason, declined to grant the sum, but offered, if Mr. Smith would mention the locality, and the discovery was found to be valuable, to reward him accordingly. Very unwisely, as it turned out, Mr. Smith did not accept this offer; and it remained for Mr. Hargraves, who came with the prestige of his California experience, to make the discovery anew, and get the reward from the English government on their own conditions. The first discovery was made in the banks of the Summer Hill creek and the Lewis Ponds river, small streams which run from the northern flank of the Conobalas down to the Macquarrie. The gold was found in the sand and gravel accumulated, especially on the inside of the bends of the brook, and at the junction of the two water-courses, where the stream of each would be often checked by the other. It was coarse gold, showing its parent site to be at no great distance, and probably in the quartz veins traversing the metamorphic rocks of the Conobalas. Mr. Stutchbury, the government geologist, reported on the truth of the discovery, and shortly afterward found gold in several other localities, especially on the banks of the Turon, some distance north-east of the Conobalas. This was a much wider and more open valley than the Summer Hill creek, and the gold accordingly was much finer, occurring in small scales and flakes. It was, however, more regularly and equably distributed through the soil, so that a man might reckon with the greatest certainty on the quantity his daily labor would return him. At the head of the Turon river, among the dark glens and gullies in which it collects its head-waters, in the flanks of the Blue mountains, the gold got “coarser,” occurred in large lumps or nuggets, but these were more sparingly scattered.

As already said, the discovery was made by Mr. Hargraves, in May, 1850; and before the end of June, there were more than twenty thousand persons at the mines. When it was known in the town of Bathurst, that the discovery had been made, and that the country, from the mountain ranges, back to an indefinite extent in the interior, was probably one immense goldfield, the excitement was intense and universal. A complete phrensy seemed to seize on the entire population; the business of the town was paralyzed; and there was a universal rush to the diggings. People of all trades, callings and pursuits were quickly transformed into miners; and many a hand which had been trained to kid gloves, or accustomed only to the quill, became nervous to clutch the pick or crowbar, or to “rock the cradle” at the newly discovered mines. The roads were literally alive with the crowds pressing on from every quarter, some armed with pickaxes, others shouldering crowbars and shovels, and not a few strung round with hand-basins, tin-pots and cullenders. Scores rushed from their homes, with only a blanket, and a pick or grubbing-hoe, full of hope that a few days would give them heaps of the precious metal. Everything at once rose in price, and the whole face of society was speedily changed in almost every aspect.

The first pieces found were in grains. Soon a piece was picked up weighing some eleven ounces; and soon after, several lumps weighing together about three pounds. Gold was speedily discovered in almost every place where it was looked for; in the beds of the streams, and in veins of quartz, in grains, in scales, and in lumps of various weights. Some, as might be expected, were successful, and some comparatively unsuccessful in seeking it; the great mass of the miners averaging not more than four or five dollars a day, while in some rare cases a single individual gathered to the value of a thousand dollars in the same time. Gold was soon discovered in the Wellington district, and in various other places. One piece was picked up weighing almost five pounds; and from a single cleft in a rock, a miner took out eleven pounds’ weight of gold, in separate pieces of various sizes. A Scotchman gathered fourteen hundred dollars’ worth in four days, and eight of his associates averaged from thirty to forty dollars’ worth a day. Apparently there is no end to the supply, at least for years to come; and all this within forty miles of a town where every comfort, not to say luxury, can be obtained, with a good post-road all the way to Sydney, and in the midst of tracts of the most fertile land, partly occupied, and where food may be supplied for millions of inhabitants, if needed. An official statement estimates the supply of Australian gold at sixty million dollars a year; and in addition to the gold, diamonds and platinum have also been found. Australia and California are likely to be the great sources of the supply of gold, compared with which all others will be relatively unimportant.

Before leaving the subject of gold, it may be interesting to the reader to trace the process of its coinage, which may thus be briefly stated. The metal, after being received in the deposit-room, is carefully weighed, and a receipt given. Each deposit is then melted separately in the melting-room, and molded into bars. These bars next pass through the hands of the assayer, who with a chisel chips a small fragment from each one. Each chip is then rolled into a thin ribbon, and filed down until it weighs exactly ten grains. It is then melted into a little cup made of calcined bone ashes, and all the base metals, copper, tin, &c., are absorbed by the porous material of the cup or carried off by oxydation. The gold is then boiled in nitric acid, which dissolves the silver which it contains, and leaves the gold pure. It is then weighed, and the amount which it has lost gives the exact proportion of impurity in the original bar, and a certificate of the amount of coin due the depositor is made out accordingly. After being assayed, the bars are melted with a certain proportion of silver, and being poured into a dilution of nitric acid and water, assume a granulated form. In this state the gold is thoroughly boiled in nitric acid, and rendered perfectly free from silver or any other baser metals which may happen to cling to it. It is next melted with one-ninth its weight of copper, and, thus alloyed, is run into bars, and delivered to the coiner for coinage. The bars are rolled out in a rolling-mill until nearly as thin as the coin which is to be made from them. By a process of annealing they are rendered sufficiently ductile to be drawn through a longitudinal orifice in a piece of steel, thus reducing the whole to a regular width and thickness. A cutting-machine next punches small round pieces from the bar, about the size of the coin. These pieces are weighed separately by the “adjusters,” and if too heavy are filed down; if too light they are melted again. The pieces which have been adjusted are run through a milling-machine, which compresses them to the right diameter and raises the edge. Two hundred and fifty are milled in a minute by the machine. They are then again softened by the process of annealing, and after a thorough cleaning are placed in a tube connecting with the stamping instrument, and are taken thence one at a time by the machinery, and stamped between the dies. They are now finished, and, being thrown into a box, are delivered to the treasurer for circulation. The machinery, of course, for all those processes, must be of the nicest kind. When in full operation, a mint like that of England, or that of the United States at Philadelphia, can coin millions on millions in a year.

QUICKSILVER MINES.

Quicksilver, or mercury, is the only metal which remains liquid at ordinary temperatures. It is white and very brilliant, as may be seen in common thermometers. It boils at six hundred and sixty degrees of heat; and freezes, and assumes a crystalline texture, at forty degrees below zero. It is extensively used in its various forms in the arts, and also for medicinal purposes. The thermometer and barometer illustrate some of its uses in its pure state; the backs of our common mirrors are covered with it, which gives them their reflecting power; it is used extensively in separating some of the purer metals from the mixtures with which they are found; and in some of its forms or combinations, it is the basis of calomel, corrosive sublimate, vermilion, &c.

Mercury is found in various parts of the world. Among its principal mines are those of Almaden, near Cordova, in Spain, and of Idria, near Carniola, in Austria; though it is also found in Peru, California, Italy and China. Formerly most of the quicksilver came from Germany; but more recently the largest production is probably in Spain. So extensively is it used, that in 1831, over three hundred thousand pounds were brought from the continent into England; and for the fourteen years ending in 1828, the imports of it into Canton, by the English and Americans, averaged nearly six hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year, worth some three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Of all the quicksilver mines, those of Idria, mentioned above, are some of the most interesting, and demand a particular description, as they have been celebrated in natural history, poetry and romance. The ban of Idria, is a district of Austria, lying west of Carniola. The town, which is small, is seated in a deep valley, amid high mountains, on the river of the same name, and at the bottom of so steep a descent, that its approach is a task of great difficulty, and sometimes of danger.

The mines were discovered in 1497, before which time that part of the country was inhabited by a few coopers only, and other artificers in wood, with which the territory abounds. One evening, a cooper having placed a new tub under a dropping spring, to try if it would hold water, on returning the next morning, found it so heavy that he could scarcely move it. He at first was led by his superstition to suspect that the tub was bewitched; but spying, at length, a shining fluid at the bottom, with the nature of which he was unacquainted, he collected it, and proceeded to an apothecary at Laubach, who, being an artful man, dismissed him with a small recompense, requesting that he would not fail to bring him further supplies. From this small beginning, the product of these mines has steadily increased; and now might easily be made six hundred tuns per year, though to uphold the price of the metal, the Austrian government has restricted the annual production to one hundred and fifty tuns. In 1803, a disastrous fire took place in these mines, which was extinguished only by drowning all the underground workings. The mercury, sublimed by the heat in this catastrophe, occasioned diseases and nervous tremblings in more than nine hundred persons in the neighborhood.