The Hodgkinson Goldfield, Northern Queensland. 11 



except the Palmer and Charters Towers. Its gold is, how- 

 ever, of poorer quality, being only worth, on an average, in 

 1878, £3 8s. per ounce. The Palmer gold is almost pure, 

 being worth £4 2s. 6d. In Queensland generally the gold 

 is much alloyed with silver, and if the Palmer is an excep- 

 tion, it must be remembered that the average was taken 

 principally from alluvial gold, which is generally nearly 

 pure. Only 8233 ounces was of reef gold, out of 120,233 

 from the Palmer, while at the Hodgkinson 44,435 ounces, 

 exported in 1878, contained about 4000 ounces of gold from 

 alluvial sources. The Hodgkinson gold is pale in colour, 

 and much alloyed with silver. Other metals are present in 

 small quantity, such as copper and antimony, but in the 

 assay only the silver is estimated. Iron and lead show 

 traces in some mines, and there is a little sulphur, and some- 

 times arsenic. In a specimen taken by me from the 

 Explorer reef, I saw blue and green carbonates of copper 

 (azurite and malachite), sulphide of iron, sulphide of copper, 

 and carbonate of iron and lead. The carbonates, no doubt, 

 were derived from the carbonate of lime in the strata. 



The average yield of the gold quartz from the Hodgkinson 

 is per ton 1 oz. 11 dwt. 3 grs. In the Palmer the average 

 is higher, being 2 oz. 13 grs.; but the average is taken from 

 smaller parcels in the latter case — about one-fifth of the 

 quantity crushed on the Hodgkinson. The yield had 

 decreased on most of the diggings in 1878 from what it 

 was in 1877. The cost of crushing is about £1 per ton at 

 both diggings, but at Ravenswood the price charged is 

 about 7s.; yet the miners' wages averaged higher in 1878 

 on the Hodgkinson than any other diggings except Charters 

 Towers. 



The quartz veins on the Palmer River are in silurian 

 slates. There are no dykes like those on the Hodgkinson, 

 but there is a very slight capping at one place of what may 

 be considered a trap rock, probably tertiary, and like 

 phonolite. At Gympie the gold is in Devonian or lower 

 carboniferous slates, with fossils and dykes of diorite. The 

 dykes at the Hodgkinson are entirely of a different character, 

 and not in the least like the diorites of Gympie, which are 

 very similar to those seen at Gaffney's Creek, in Victoria. 

 In Charters Towers the reefs are worked in hornblendic 

 porphyry and syenite, which is seen to be derived from 

 altered slates. In Ravenswood a similar formation is 

 worked for gold ; but there can be no doubt that the 



