372 
PROCEEDINGS OE SECTION C. 
The Cloncurry has yielded copper, the Hodgkinson antimony, 
Eavenswood lead and silver, and the numerous rivers already men- 
tioned, comprising the Tinaroo district, tin ; but gold only has up to the 
present been the fitting reward of the industry and capital of the 
miner and mining investor in the Etheridge district, the largest of 
our goldfields and the furthest removed from communication by rail 
or sea with the centres of commerce and civilisation. 
During the succeeding quinquennial period, 18S0-S4, when the 
abnormal increase brought about by the alluvial yield of the Palmer 
had abated, and nothing uew had been discovered to sustain it, a very 
considerable falling off was observed, for in 1883 the yield had fallen 
lower than it had ever been since 1873. Of the ten years the last 
was the poorest ; but when things come to the worst they begin to 
improve, and before this complete declension had been consummated 
the silver lining — if the inferior may be used to symbolise the superior 
metal- — shone through the cloud. Mount Morgan had been found to 
contain gold ; and although some time necessarily elapsed before 
machinery could be erected and the mine developed, it was proved at 
a very early period that large quantities of gold would be produced. 
It is a difficult matter to predicate the quantity to be obtained from a 
reef where only a point has been laid bare, probably by trenching, and 
it is found to be ill-defined. It is difficult to estimate the production 
of alluvial gold, as that of a few loads of earth or sand gives no 
guarantee of its continuance in like proportion, but here were the 
huge boulders, fragments of the mass of the mountain, scattered over 
its slopes which could be tested at all points, the mass itself being but 
slightly covered with the abrasion and oxidation of time and the 
atmosphere, so that no difficulty was experienced in obtaining ample 
evidence of the enormous wealth which lay dormant in the bare, 
craggy, uninviting slope projecting into the 640-acre selection, lately 
the property of Mr, Gfordon, but which had been transferred to the 
Morgans for a consideration of sufficient value, per haps, when estimated 
as a very poor grazing selection, but insignificant when compared with 
the wealth of the precious metal and its position as the key to the top 
of the spur which contained perhaps the principal portion of the 
auriferous deposit, and which was secured at the outset by the wide- 
awake proprietary, making the largest, richest, and most complete gold- 
mining property in Queensland or the Australian colonies, and which 
was not long in adding its quota to the output of the colon}^. 
That the proprietary had its difficulties from the want of water 
and the finely diffused condition of the gold in the stone is unquestion- 
able, but money answereth all things, and these difficulties were soon 
overcome, and from that time the position, prospects, and doings at 
“ the mountain” have been familiar to the public. The formation of 
the proprietary into a public company ; the various u jumping” com- 
panies formed; the trials in the colony, and before the judicial com- 
mittee of Her Majesty’s Privy Councii ; the upward tendency of the 
scrip, its rise to a nominal value of £16,000,000 sterling, the bets 
and anticipation that it tvould shortly and justifiably rise to 
£20,000,000; the gambling speculation to which it almost of necessity 
gave rise, and the consequent collapse of some of the speculators, are 
all matters of current history. But the great fact remains that the 
mountain gives employment to about 1,000 men, in addition to those 
