406 Norman Taylor — The Cudgegong Diamond Field. 



tifully columnar in six-sided vertical prisms. The columns decom- 

 pose and break up into concretionary spheroidal masses. Where 

 this spur joins the more elevated mass of basalt, there is a shaft 

 through 12 feet of rubbly and decomposed basalt, full of veins of 

 kaolin, resting on brown and red sandstones with no intervening- 

 drift ; and it is doubtful whether the lower and higher basalts are 

 connected at all. A shaft was sunk at the north-west angle of the 

 hill through 16 feet of loose rubbly basalt, 42 feet of dense hard 

 basalt, and 18 feet of drift, mostly sandy and similar to the Hassall's 

 Hill drift spoken of further on. A drive was put in on the bottom 

 60 feet south, where a high bar was met with, and beyond this 

 again was another channel or gutter. The " wash " was very heavy, 

 containing large blocks of "floating reef" and coarse gold. The 

 top of the shaft is about 95 feet above the river, while the top of the 

 hill is 108 feet. From the western angle of the hill, round to the 

 north-east, is a flat fringe of basalt, between the edge of which and 

 the escarpment of the higher main mass, some sinking has been 

 done, but, curiously enough, without going through basalt. This can 

 only be explained by a slip having taken place, which has projected 

 the basalt over and beyond the drift. No drift appears to be present 

 under any part of the hill except the north-west angle, where the 

 lead must run from a little north of east to south of west. The 

 basalt is slightly vesicular, the cavities being occasionally filled 

 with aragonite, and an agatiform carbonate of lime and iron 

 (sphasrosiderite), and the joint cracks are much coated with 

 hyalite or volcanic glass. The underlying drift is a good deal 

 cemented, and contains much silicified wood. This hill, by repeated 

 barometrical observations, appeared to be from 30 to 40 feet higher 

 than any of the other outliers, and from this fact, and the presence 

 of hyalite, I at first imagined it might be a point of eruption, the 

 absence of the usual scoria? and ashes being accounted for by the 

 immense denudation which had taken place, and which had swept 

 away all the lighter material, and left nothing but the denser basalt 

 below. At the spot where the drift from this hill, in the old gold- 

 working times, was washed at the river, the manager of one of the 

 companies obtained, with a Hunt's diamond-saving machine, twenty- 

 one diamonds ; and a Mrs. Alexander, with her children, had 

 previously obtained about the same number. A large waterhole, 

 running in the strike of the rocks and half a mile long, bounds the 

 west side of Jordan's Flat, and, at its south end, the flagstones abut 

 on the river at Stony Creek. Here there has been a small lead 

 traced, but the sinking was very wet, as the bottom was below the 

 present river-level ; a little gold was obtained, but no diamonds. A 

 striking object is the large quantity of flat boulders of brown and 

 greenish grey grits and sandstones with pebbles of quartz, felstone, 

 poiphyry, and greenstone, the latter evidently derived from that at 

 Gulgong, and containing large crystals of hornblende. This deposit 

 seems to be the remains of a former old drift, which has been 

 denuded down, and mixed with the recent river wash, and may 

 probably have occupied the same spot, or nearly so, that it does now. 



