1853.] WATHEN GOLD FIELDS OF VICTORIA. 'Jl 



deposits are commonly on the sides and crests of hills adjoining rich 

 gullies. The second or deeper class of workings consists of pits or 

 " holes " from 3 or 4 to 25 and even 30 feet deep. In these deposits 

 the gold is almost always imbedded in a stiff clay. When any spot 

 is rich on the surface no gold will be found immediately beneath, and 

 vice versa when rich below it will yield nothing on the surface. 

 These deeper or Pit Workings are of three kinds : — 



1. In the channel of an auriferous creek, at points where the 

 stream is impeded by bars of vertical slates traversing the valley, 

 gold is often found by sinking through the alluvial mud and earth 

 down to the rocky channel beneath. Here the gold is lodged in a 

 grey clay, which fills the chinks and fissures of the slate rock, whence 

 the miners extract it by means of knives, spoons, shears, or any other 

 tool they can meet with. Where the bed of the stream expands into 

 an alluvial flat, the auriferous deposit will also increase in width. 

 Such was the first-worked "Golden Point" of Mount Alexander, a 

 local expansion of the bed of Forest Creek. If it should happen 

 that the existing Creek has left its original channel, the run of the 

 gold deposit then quits the modern Creek and follows its ancient 

 channel. These workings in the beds of creeks are commonly from 3 

 to 10 feet deep. They were the first undertaken at Mount Alexander. 

 The deposits are richest at points where the stream has been im- 

 peded in its course, either by frequent sinuosities or by being crossed 

 by a bar of slate as already mentioned. 



2. A second kind of deep auriferous deposit is met vdth in the dry 

 gullies which descend from the higher ranges to the main valleys, 

 generally with a gentle inclination, from a quarter of a mile to a mile 

 in length. These gullies in some spots are narrowed by the con- 

 verging hills and sometimes expand into open slopes or flats. Here 



Fig. 2. — Section through a Gully, showing the ordinary width of the 

 Auriferous Deposit. 



Beds of red and yellow clays, over- 

 lying the auriferous deposit. Shaft or 

 ■ V ' "hole." 



the gold is commonly found, at from 10 to 20 feet beneath the sur- 

 face, in a reddish or yellowish clay, lying either upon the fundamental 

 rocks, in the chinks of the vertical slate, or else upon a thick tenacious 



