PROGRESS OE MIKING AND GEOLOGY IK QUEEKSLAKD. 367 
any previous year, but with that exception there was no special 
evidence of mining activity, and it was not until the last quarter of the 
following year that the discovery of gold at Gyrnpie gave to the mining 
industry that eminence and importance to the colony which at once 
proclaimed it as its saviour from the terrible destitution resulting from 
the collapse of the previous year, and so established the colony in the 
path of prosperity that in a few years the bitter experinces of 1866 
were well-nigh forgotten. 
Another small shipment of manganese was made during 1867, this 
time valued at £5 per ton, and sixty-four bags of minerals (unnamed) 
were sent away, but these were only valued at £40, and could not 
therefore have been gold specimens, nor any other very valuable metal, 
probably manganese, galena, plumbago, or copper, as several reports 
of discoveries were made about this time, and in the following year one 
ton of gaiena, value £10, was exported, as were also more manganese 
and more quartz specimens, and in 1869 three-fourths of a ton of 
plumbago, value £10, was exported, and another small shipment of 
manganese. This brings us to the close of a second period of five 
years, during which time we have produced minerals to the value of 
£1,927,217, or six times the production of the previous similar period ; 
but a large proportion of this difference arose from the two fuli years 
of active production of the precious metal at Gyrnpie. Indeed, the 
only other metal then produced was copper, and whilst it kept up its 
ordinary output there did not appear to be much increase ; the last 
year of each period showing £60,000 and £76,230 respectively. 
The discovery of gold at Gyrnpie has had a far-reaching effect on 
the fortunes of the colony. Up to that time the total production had 
not reached 100,000 oz., and the condition of the colony was as low as 
it well could be ; but that event not only drew hundreds of the 
unemployed from the capital, but gave an impetus to prospecting all 
over the colony; and in the following year the production reached 
165,801 oz., and although it was slightly lower during the two 
following years it soon recovered, and, roughly speaking, has for many 
years past been nearly four times that amount. It is worthy of note 
that in the year 1851 — the year of the discovery of gold in Victoria — 
Gyrnpie appears to have had a narrow escape from being precipitated 
into a goldfield, for, according to the Jlloreton Bay Courier of 3rd 
November of that year, they had “ learnt from Mr. Surplice, who 
left Wide Bay about nine days ago, and who arrived in Brisbane on 
Saturday night, that the reports of gold being found in the Wide Bay 
district are well founded. The gold exists at a spot about sixty miles 
this side of Maryborough, and several persons from the township had 
gone there to dig. Mr. Surplice informs us that he himself, when in 
company with Mr. Murray, picked up a piece of quartz containing a 
speck of gold, about the eighth size of a pea, in a creek about twelve 
miles from Mr. Murray’s station. We cannot, however, learn that 
any appreciable quantity has been found, the working having only 
just commenced.” Nothing appears to have been the immediate 
result of that working ; but doubtless it was borne in mind by the 
timber-getters and station hands of the district, who, it is generally 
understood, “ put Nash on” to the locality previous to his notable 
discovery in 1867. And where cattle picked up a precarious livelihood 
on ridges not of the first quality for that purpose, we now find an 
