57 



•will doubtless be directed to these upon their being made easily acces- 

 sible by the pi-esent projected line of railway, which it is anticipated will 

 cross this section. At this })lace also the richest ore by assay is found 

 in close proximity to a dioritic dyke of considerable magnitude. 



An attempt was made some halt dozen years ago to extract the 

 gold from the banks of clay, sand and gravel along the Du Loup, a 

 tributary from the east of the Chaudiere, by the hydraulic method. 

 Owing to various unfavorable circumstances this enterprise does not 

 appear to have been remunerative. The failure in this case should 

 not, however, be regarded as conclusive, as determining the unprofit- 

 ableness of such an enterprise, eithei* on this stream or the many 

 others in this locality, since from a series of trial washings over con- 

 siderable areas made in 1851-52 under the supervision of an officer of 

 the Geological Survey the results obtained from the Du Loup district 

 were such as to fully warrant the employment of this method for the 

 separation of the gold on a large s cale. The occurrence of nuggets of 

 large size, some of which had a value of over $1,000, from the aurifer- 

 ous gravels of this district is a very important feature, since such coarse 

 gold has not in all probability travelled any considerable distance from 

 its source. Comparing the very low percentage of gold which is profit- 

 ably extracted from the gravels of California and Australia by this 

 method with the yield obtained in the experimental trials just referied 

 to in the Chaudiere district, there should, for that section, be a very 

 handsome margin for profit over expenditure, provided the topographi- 

 cal features of these streams are such as to render the use of the 

 hydraulic method possible ; and it is certainly but reasonable to expect 

 that the time is not far distant when with the aid of proper and skilled 

 mining experience, and by the judicious expenditure of capital, the gold 

 industries of this portion of the Dominion will be found to be equally 

 valuable with those either of British Columbia or of Nova Scotia. 



