tutes together one gold-field of about 400 square-miles, an area afford- 
ing room enough for 50,000 diggers. With the extension of the 
gold-fields and with the always increasing number of diggers, which 
at the close of 1861 was already estimated at 1.2,000 to 15,000, the 
amount of gold obtained increased, so that in December 1861 weekly 
escorts were established, which, exclusive of considerable quantities 
of gold, that remained in the hands of private individuals, con- 
veyed each time from 10,000 to 12,000 ounces to Dunedin. By the 
middle of January, 1862, the total amount of gold obtained upon 
the Otago gold-fields was already about 250,000 ounces, or in round 
numbers about one million pounds sterling in value. 
The gold from the Otago gold-fields is partly granular or gun- 
powder-like, partly in scales or nuggets , or crystallized ; it exhibits 
every degree of intermixture and variety of each of these forms 
or kinds in different localities. It is associated with titaniferous 
iron-sand, iron pyrites, tin-ore, topaz, garnets and other miner- 
als. The original matrix of the gold is quartz, and the latter oc- 
curs interbedded in, or associated with metamorphic slates, espe- 
cially of the gneiss, mica-, talc-, chlorite- and clay-slate families. 
These auriferous schistose formations, which form the geological 
base of the greater part of Otago, are the source of the gold drift 
so abundantly distributed over the lower parts of the province. 
Quartz-reefs are confined to the upper arenaceous schists , but there 
are very few instances of true fissure-reefs having been discovered. 
Only one reef as yet is being worked in the same manner as those 
in Victoria, and the yield is about one ounce to a ton. Dr. Hector 
states, that he has nowhere seen in the Province of Otago the exact 
mineralogical equivalents of the auriferous slates of Victoria or 
California, but they resemble much more those of British Columbia. 1 
In the beginning of 1864 gold was discovered on the northern 
end of the island, in the Province of Marlborough, on the banks 
of the Wakamarina and its tributaries , a river running into the 
1 See Dr. Hector on the Geology of Otago (Quart. Journ. of the Geol. 
Society of London, 1865), and W. L. Lindsay, on the Geology of the gold-fields of 
Olago (Proceed, of I he Geol. Section of the British Association at Cambridge, 1862). 
