Goldcrest

“ I have found, in the dry diggings of Weaver’s Creek, pieces of gold, some of them weighing nearly a quarter of an ounce, lying in the upper black soil within two inches of the surface. It is sometimes found embedded in a hard white clay, at other times in a red, and at others in a blue clay. As a general thing, I have found that where the gold is coarse, it usually descends until it reaches one of the above-mentioned clays, while the finer particles rest upon the gravelly stratum nearer the surface, and thus fine gold is most frequently found mingled with red gravel. ”

“ An expert worker in average ground could gather and wash a panful of dirt every ten minutes. There were few places in Bigbear Gully that would not yield two shillings’ worth of gold to the panful, so that in those early days, while the surface soil was still fresh, a man could, by steady work alone—without incidental nuggets—work out gold-dust to the value of between five and six pounds sterling a day, while, occasionally, he came upon a lump, or nugget, equal, perhaps, to what he could procure by the labour of a week or more. ”

“ So far as discovered, the gold is found in an extent of country four hundred miles long, by one hundred and fifty wide, and no particular portion seems more productive than another. In the river and on the flatlands the gold dust is found; but among the rocks and in the highlands it is found in lumps, from the size of a man's hand to the size of an ordinary duck-shot, all of which is solid, and presents the appearance of having been thrown up by a volcanic eruption. So plenty is the gold, that little care is paid to the washing of it by those engaged when he left ”

“ Leaving Don Luis, then, smoking in the tent, we proceeded to work, and found that the great majority of the gold-finders appeared to entertain our opinions, or at all events to imitate our practice, as to labouring on the Sunday. I had now leisure more particularly to remark the nature of the soil in which the gold was found. The dust is found amid the shingle actually below water, but the most convenient way of proceeding is to take the soil from that portion of the bed which has been overflowed but is now dry. ”

“ In the same chapter Diodorus says that “there is no silver at all found in Gaul, but gold in abundance, of which the natives get supplied without mining or hardship. The currents of the rivers, which are tortuous in their course, beat against the banks formed by the adjacent mountains, and bursting away considerable hills, fill them with gold dust. This the persons who are engaged in the workings collect, and they grind or break up the lumps which contain the gold dust. Then having washed away the earthy part with water, they transfer the gold to furnaces for smelting. ”

“ At length a ridge of gold scales, mixed with a little sand, remains in the pan, from the quantity of which some esti{52}mate may be formed of the richness of the place. If there are five to eight grains, it is considered that “it will pay.” If less gold is found, the miner digs deeper or opens a new hole, till he finds a place affording a good prospect. When this is done, he sets his cradle by the side of the stream, in some convenient place, and proceeds to wash all the dirt. This is aptly named prospecting, and is the hardest part of a miner’s business. ”

“ They often bring their families with them. I saw one family, the father of which, assisted by the older children, was “panning out” gold on a stream near his rude home made of hides. The mother was washing clothes, while the infant was swinging in a basket made fast to the branches overhead. An interesting girl of five years, with a tiny pick and spade, was digging in a hole, already sunk two feet, and putting the dirt in a pan, which she would take to the stream and wash, putting the scale or two of gold into a dipper a little larger than a thimble. A heavy rain drove us home, wet and cold. ”

“ In the early years of Ballarat, the operations of the diggers were confined to the surface workings, or the sinking of shallow shafts into the rich alluvial. Fabulous wealth was thus raised by thousands of men in a comparatively easy manner. Scientific mining for gold was not attempted at this early stage, the men merely digging and delving into the golden soil to the depth of a hundred or one hundred and fifty feet, when they were stopped by a huge layer of solid rock. ”

“ On an alluvial lead the object of every one is to “get on the gutter,” that is, to reach the lowest part of the old underground watercourse, through which for centuries the gold may have been accretionising from the percolation of the mineral-impregnated water; or, when derived from reefs or broken down leaders, the flow of water has acted as a natural sluice wherein the gold is therefore most thickly collected. Sometimes the lead runs for miles and is of considerable width, at others it is irregular, and the gold-bearing “gutter” small and hard to find. ”

“ The soil must be removed, sometimes to the depth of twenty, thirty, or even forty feet, before the gold is found. When found, it sometimes proves very rich, but more frequently very poor. I have seen a company of nine persons labor for two weeks, keeping down the water with pumps, and, after all their toil, not find a grain of gold to reward their efforts. It is truly one of the most discouraging circumstances in a miner’s life, that, although he may one day make his pounds, the next he may make little or nothing. ”

“ The Botanical Gardens are always beautiful, and are a model to other establishments of the same kind in much larger communities.'
It was here, early in August 1851, that alluvial gold was discovered at a bend in the Yarrowee Creek, renamed Golden Point, where the toil of some of the earlier diggings yielded from twenty to fifty pounds weight of gold per day. In some spots, indeed, the gold lay almost on the surface, amidst the roots of the bush grass, to be turned up by the wheels of the passing bullock-drays, or picked out by hand after heavy showers. ”

“ In prospecting a reef, a miner walks along the strike of the outcrop, "napping" as he goes, i.e., breaking off with a hammer or pick, pieces of the quartz or ironstone outcrop. Each fragment is carefully examined for the presence of gold, which is nearly always found, if on the surface, in a free state, that is to say, uncombined with any other mineral. If any gold is present, it may occur in small specks as fine as flour, or in large solid lumps as big as one's fist, as in Bayley's Reward Claim, Londonderry, and one or two other mines. ”

“ Marshall's that night, and the next day we proceeded some little distance up the South Fork, and found that gold existed along the whole course, not only in the bed of the main stream, where the water had subsided, but in every little dried-up creek and ravine. Indeed I think it is more plentiful in these latter places, for I myself, with nothing more than a small knife, picked out from a dry gorge, a little way up the mountain, a solid lump of gold which weighed nearly an ounce and a half. ”

“ Nuggets, properly so-called, are never found in quartz lodes; but, as will be shown later, a true nugget having all the characteristics of so-called waterworn alluvial may be artificially formed on a small piece of galena, or pyrites, by suspending the base metal in the loop of a thread in a weak solution of chloride of gold in which a few hard-wood chips are thrown.
Prospecting for alluvial gold at shallow depths is a comparatively easy process, requiring no great amount of technical knowledge. Usually the first gold is got at or near the surface and then traced to deep leads, if such exist. ”

“ It breeds in shrubberies, plantations, and spinnies, and makes its nest of green moss, lichens, fine grass, spiders’ webs, and hair beautifully felted together and lined with liberal quantities of down and feathers.
The eggs number six or seven, as a rule, and are pale flesh or yellowish-white in ground colour, spotted and blotched with reddish-brown, the markings being most numerous at the larger end.
The Gold-crest’s song is like its singer—very small, soft, and sweet. It is difficult to hear, especially towards the end, unless the listener happens to be very close. ”

“ The ordinary non-scientific digger will do well to give credence to this view of the case, and will often thereby save himself much useless trouble. Sometimes also the alluvial gold, coarser in size than true reef-born alluvial, is derived almost in situ from small quartz "leaders," or veins, which the grinding down of the face of the slates has exposed; these leaders in time being also broken and worn, set free the gold they have contained, which does not, as a rule, travel far, but sometimes becomes water-worn by the rubbing over it of the disintegrated fragments of rock. ”

“ Going off into the unexplored mountains to hunt new fields of gold, whether in gulches or lodes was prospecting. Digging a hole down through the dirt and loose stones in the bottom of a gulch to see if gold could be found in the sand was prospecting. Sinking a shaft into the top dirt of a hillside in search of a new lode, or into the lode when discovered to see if gold could be found there was prospecting. And manipulating a specimen of quartz by pulverizing and the use of quicksilver to see if it contained gold was also prospecting. ”

“ Then, with a large, dry brush, in light, sharp touches, brush away the superfluous gold, and the work is completed.
There are other methods of applying gold-leaf, but this is given as the simplest. A gilder's tip (a flat brush) is generally used, but requires skill in handling, which remark applies also to the gilder's palette and knife.
Any corners to which the gold has not adhered may be retouched with the size, and gilded as before. Be careful not to touch the gold with the fingers, or it will be quite spoilt. If the leaf curls up upon the paper, it can be blown down with a gentle breath. ”

“ Old river beds formed of gravelly drifts in the same neighbourhood may probably contain alluvial gold, or shallow deposits of "wash" on hillsides and in valleys will often carry good surface gold. This is sometimes due to the denudation, or wearing away, of the hills containing quartz-veins—that is, where the alluvial gold really was derived from such veins, which, popular opinion to the contrary, is not always the case. ”

“ While gold dust and gold nuggets were to be found in every miner’s cabin in amounts ranging up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, still the boys were as poor as ever, for nowhere had they found the slightest signs of gold packed in moosehide sacks and corded up like stovewood.
They had gone through valleys, up and down streams, over tundras, into forests and across lakes and they had combed these districts pretty well, but the only visible effect of their efforts was the exeunt of their good grub and they were fast running short of their reserve rations for both themselves and their dogs. ”

“ The sun went down while Beth, Van, and Elsa were still five miles from their goal. They rode as rapidly as possible. The horses, however, were jaded, and the way was slightly up grade. The twilight was brief. It descended abruptly from the western bank of clouds, by now as thick and dark as mud. Afar off shone the first faint light of the gold-camp to which the three were riding. This glimmering ray was two miles out from the center of town. Goldite was spread in a circle four miles wide, and the most of it was isolated tents.
The darkness shut down like a pall. ”

“ In the days of Queen Elizabeth the goldenrod had a great reputation for healing wounds and was imported in considerable quantities and sold in the London markets in powder form at half a crown a pound. In range the goldenrod covers the continent with its cloth of gold. North, south, east, west, on mountain and by sea, in dry field and in wet swamp, it flourishes in its season and warms every landscape with its rich color. ”

“ The preceding notes show that the natives of the Gold Coast, and of West Africa generally, are adepts at procuring their gold by 'surfacing,' washing with the calabash or wooden bowl the rich alluvial formations that underlie the top-soil. This is the rudest form of machinery, preceding in California the cradle, the torn, and the sluice. Westerns made their pans of brass or copper, about sixteen inches in diameter, and nearly two inches deep in the middle where the gold gravitates. Panning in Africa is women's work, and the process has been described in the preceding pages. ”

“ When it is remembered that the price of provisions at the Yodda Camp is prohibitive, it is not an extravagant assumption to compute that each man must be turning out at least three ounces of gold per week to make it worth his while to remain. There are other workings in the Woodlark Islands, and there are certainly evidences of gold everywhere in the streams of New Guinea. It does not seem likely that the miners are turning their earnings to the best account at the present time. ”

“ GOLD-LEAF. For the purpose of gilding very thin leaves of gold are required, so thin, that although gold is expensive, yet gilded articles (as picture-frames) are very far from being so. To produce this gold-leaf is the business of the gold-beater. He first obtains the gold in a state of purity from the refiner, in the form of small grains, which, mixed with a small quantity of borax and alloy, are put into an earthen pot called a crucible (coated beforehand with clay to keep it from cracking) , and then placed in a furnace which is raised to a white heat. ”