50 Auriferous Districts of 



The first patches of gold worked on the Broken Kiver certainly 

 followed the line of strike of one of these conglomerate beds. 

 There may be true fissure reefs worked here for gold ; but I have 

 only observed very small ones myself. 



" In the Broken River itself, I have found large boulders of 

 Sulphide of Antimony mixed with Limestone and one piece of 

 Galena, but failed to find any lode." 



[Galena was brought to me iu August, 1861, from the vicinity 

 of Mount Wyatt. The minerals of this district must, therefore, 

 be widely diffused. From the fossils determined, it appears that 

 the Tipper Silurian exists there covered by Upper Devonian and 

 upper Carboniferous formations. In the former occur the copper 

 and gold. This is repeated on the Broken River.] 



Mr. Daintree goes on to say : " I anticipate that as the country 

 becomes more known, valuable metallic ores will be found in the 

 Broken River and its tributaries. As the name implies, it is a 

 difficult country to travel over, and as the Aborigines in it yet 

 hold their own, it is unsafe for individual prospectors. 



" The strike of the Upper Silurian is from N. to N.E , nearly 

 at right angles to the Metamorphic slates of the Cape." 



Writing of this country in his account of his first visit to 

 Northern Queensland, Mr. Daintree says (in the Yeoman of 29th 

 August, 1803), — " Mr. Clarke has long ago pointed out this dis- 

 trict as a future gold-field. The fulfilment or otherwise of this 

 prophecy is at hand." It is, therefore, satisfactory to me that 

 Mr. Daintree should himself be the means of verifying the truth 

 of my prognostication in four years' time, and I am greatly 

 obliged to him for enabling me to establish it. In that article in 

 the Yeoman, Mr. Daintree, after confirming some other views of 

 my own, gives a brief statement of the occurrence of Silurian 

 rocks in Queensland. His opinion is that the Upper Silurian 

 forms a belt from Brisbane to Broad Sound, extending to 

 Maryborough and Rockhampton, the dip being at a high angle to 

 jN'.E., and the strike parallel with the coast. Somewhat lower 

 come in the Canoona and other gold-fields S.W. of Maryborough, 

 where the same Upper Silurian beds occur. On Perry's Range, 

 Upper Burdekin, the dip is to S.W. These occur on the horizon 

 of the Canoona field, and represent the Western side of an 

 anticlinal, the summit of which has gone to form a portion of 

 the enormous Carboniferous formation, and, as proved by the 

 quartz in my fossiliferous Wollumbilla and Fitzroy Downs' auri- 

 ferous calcareous rock, a portion of the Secondary formations, 

 that cover and conceal vast masses of the lower Pakeozoic or even 

 older series of formations. 



The only apparent difficulty in reconciling the age of the Silurian 

 of the Broken River with that of the coast, is that the strike is 

 there N. to jN'.E., whilst to the South-eastward it is to K". W. This 



