GEOLOGY. 221 



A writer in the New Orleans Era, describes the appearance of the 

 mine as follows : " As we neared the saline bed, we could see through 

 the scattered trees and bushes white heaps of the quarried rock, salt, 

 stacked up in piles ten to fifteen feet high, and short distances apart ; 

 giving evidence of the wells or shafts excavated within the earth below, 

 and adjacent to these several piles of quarried blocks of salt. 



" The wells or shafts for the blasting and excavating this rock de- 

 posit are about twelve in number, of different sizes, and located within 

 a radius of about four hundred feet. They consist of a square or ob- 

 long excavation down from the surface into the earth a depth on the 

 average of about nineteen and a half feet below the surface to the 

 hard, smooth, rock salt deposit below. From all of these pits there has 

 been excavated more or less salt, doAvn into the rock to a depth of from 

 ten to thirty-five feet below its surface. The salt is so compact as to re- 

 quire a drill and powder blast for its excavation ; the quantity appears 

 to be inexhaustible. An analysis of the Petite Anse salt by Dr. Kid- 

 dell, of New Orleans, gives the following composition : - - Chloride of 

 sodium, 98.88; sulphate of lime, 0.76; chloride of magnesium, 0.23; 

 chloride of calcium, 0.1 3, = 100. From this analysis, the salt would 

 appear to be the purest natural salt yet discovered. 



THE GOLDEN PARALLELS. 



From a summary of interesting facts respecting the two great gold 

 fields of the world, Australia and California, given in a recent 

 number of the Edinburgh Review we derive the following. The gold 

 fields of New South Wales and Victoria extend without any interrup- 

 tion along the slopes of the great mountain range which separates the 

 eastern seaboard of Australia from the interior of the continent, and 

 the gold fields of California and British Columbia occur without inter- 

 ruption along the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Thus there 

 are presented two great gold-bearing regions, extending along two 

 widely distant elevations, and probably " owing their auriferous char- 

 acter to some influence connected with the upheaval." The possibility 

 of establishing a connection between these two gold-bearing regions 

 will be understood after a little consideration of their characteristics. 

 The American gold fields, under various names, run along the eastern 

 seaboard of the Pacific, almost from pole to pole from Behring's 

 Straits in the north to Cape Horn in the south. Throughout this vast 

 region, large quantities of the precious metal are found. " From Chili, 

 in the south, to the British Possessions, in the north, its slopes, spurs, 

 and subordinate ranges are now yielding gold. From Chili we mount 

 through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, New Granada, all still continuing to 

 yield the precious metal, after some three centuries of gold mining. 

 Thence, after we pass the Isthmus, we find the gold miner at work 

 through Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington, until at length we 

 come to the British Possessions, stretching to the shores of the Arctic 

 Ocean." Such is a brief description of the gold-bearing system of 

 America. Turning now to that of Australia, there is found a coast- 

 range running from the extreme northern point of the continent to 

 the extreme southern point. But this range neither begins nor termi- 

 nates in Australia. It extends across Bass' Straits, on the one hand, 

 and beyond Cape York on the other ; in which direction the chain of 

 19* 



