The Winter in and around Lyell 



metal, and we were also able to dress it into square setts, 

 suitable for paving the streets of a town. 



As material of this kind had not previously been 

 found near Lyell the streets of that town were in an 

 anything but satisfactory condition, and for that reason 

 we considered our discovery of considerable value, 

 especially as it was not far from the river. We called 

 the place Basalt Mountain, and decided, in the event 

 of our other ventures in this neighbourhood proving 

 successful, to construct light railways from B.H. i and 

 B.H. 2, with a junction at Basalt Mountain, to the river 

 bank, whence the products could be taken by river to 

 Lyell, and also to Red River, Smithford, and Port 

 Hutton. 



At B.H. i we found the cores carefully arranged and 

 were able from them to determine that at a depth of 

 1 20 feet from the surface there was a bed of rock-salt 

 35 feet thick, while the water pumped from the bore- 

 hole contained a large quantity of salt in solution. Here 

 was the possibility of an important industry, as all the 

 salt in use in the country, both for domestic and manu- 

 facturing purposes, had up to the present been imported. 

 We decided to order some powerful pumps, in order to 

 estimate the supply of brine obtainable from the bore- 

 hole, and also tanks for the evaporation of the liquid so 

 as to obtain the salt in the solid state. This would, we 

 considered, be a cheaper method of production than the 

 actual mining of the solid rock-salt, as there was an 

 abundance of wood fuel in the immediate neighbourhood. 



Instructions were given to continue the boring, in 

 order to ascertain if any further beds of rock-salt might 

 be encountered at lower levels. 



183 



