The Hodgkinson Goldfield, Northern Queensland. 13 



have been taken up again by men of more means, and have 

 been found to pay well. The Homeward-bound reef is a 

 remarkable instance of this. There does not seem "to me 

 sufficient reason for the opinion that the gold is found only 

 in " shoots." It very often happens that the miner rejects or 

 crushes the stone for very arbitrary reasons, and some of what 

 he throws away is often as rich as what he sends to the mills 

 as part of the " shoot." An instance of this was related to 

 me by Mr. Martin, the intelligent proprietor of the Hercules 

 quartz mill. A parcel of stone was crushed by him for some 

 miners, which yielded well. The miners then brought some 

 more stone which they had put aside as of poor character. 

 They would not run the risk of having it crushed unless at 

 half profits. Mr. Martin took the stone on these terms, and 

 it went higher than the other parcels, giving nearly 4 ozs. 

 to the ton. For my own part, I do not believe in the 

 " shoot " theory. The truth is, the miners cannot afford to 

 crush all the stone they raise, and they pick out what seems 

 to be the best, but are often mistaken in their estimate. 



Some of the mining experiences have been most peculiar. 

 In a claim which is on the summit of a hill, 300 feet above 

 Thornborough, a very rich mass of stone was found. This 

 was the celebrated reef which bore the ridiculous name of the 

 " Flying Pig." After getting some distance down the stone 

 became suddenly barren, though it had yielded 19 ozs. to 

 the ton. It is easy to assign a reason for this. The surface 

 of the reef contains the accumulation of the gold, which has 

 dropped gradually down as the reef itself has weathered 

 away. Seeing the immense amount of denudation that has 

 taken place, and which has perhaps removed hundreds of 

 feet of auriferous quartz, we might naturally expect some 

 fragments of the golden detritus to remain entangled in the 

 weathered surface and oxidized stone. It by no means 

 follows, however, that the stone below will prove entirely 

 barren, and a search as far as the water level is generally 

 rewarded with better ore. 



A question which concerns the miners of this field very 

 much is that of the tailings. It is well known that the 

 whole of the gold in the quartz does not get caught by the 

 quicksilver, especially as some of the machines used are of a 

 rough and imperfect kind. The gold thus missed remains 

 in the tailings. I was informed that a fire assay of the 

 tailings from one mill yielded as much as 6 ozs. to the ton. 

 But the question is how to deal with them. A good deal of 



