HAMILTON AURIFEROUS DEPOSITS OF NOVA SCOTIA. 47 



hundred and sixty feet. Within that distance, I discovered over 

 thirty quartz veins, ranging from an inch to fifteen inches in thick- 

 ness. The Avhole number of veins would average not less than six 

 inches, or say fifteen feet in all, thickness of quartz, to one hundred 

 and sixty feet of enclosing rock, the dip being here nearly vertical. 

 In another instance after counting and measuring the quartz veins 

 exposed within a distance of two hundred and fifty feet, I estimated 

 their aggregate thickness at twenty-five feet ; and yet, as within a 

 part of the distance of two hundred and fifty feet, there was no 

 exposure of the bed rock, the actual thickness of this quartz may 

 have been considerably greater than what I have stated. In both 

 of these cases, the quartz veins exposed, or the greater number of 

 them, were known to be auriferous from examination made at the 

 several spots where laid bare. In other localities, quartz veins of 

 five, ten, and even up to thirty feet in thickness, are found. But I 

 will not multiply instances. Those which I have specified do not, 

 I think, exhibit a much greater thickness of quartz in proportion to 

 that of the enclosing roek, than will be found generally throughout 

 these quartzite bands. As already intimated, I thus judge solely 

 from what is shown in excavations already made, and in Gold 

 Districts of many miles apart. The surface of the gold-bearing 

 rock of Nova Scotia, is for the most part concealed by a thin cover- 

 ing of drift and vegetable matter. Consequently it is an incident 

 of no unfrequent occurrence for a miner, by some accident, or lucky 

 blunder, to stumble-upon a quartz vein of exceeding richness, the 

 existence of which he never suspected, but which had lain almost 

 Avithin arm's length of where he and others have been toiling, 

 perhaps with indifferent success, for months or years previously. 



There is good reason to believe, then, that this quantity of 

 quartz within easy reach of the miner, in Nova Scotia, is immense. 

 The great economic question to be considered is : to what extent is 

 it auriferous ? It would be a sweeping and perhaps incredible 

 statement to aver, that all of these quartz veins bear gold ; and yet, 

 so far as one can venture to hold any opinion at all, upon a subject 

 upon which it is so difficult and dangerous to generalize, I rather 

 incline to the belief that they all are more or less auriferous^. 

 Certainly the result of my ovvu observations tends to that conclu- 

 sion;, i have seeji. ajid gatkei^ed some fact's^ coa^joming. a great 



