589 
The washdirt from the long tunnel gives prospects equal to about half-an-ounce to the 
load, the gold being in very fine grains. Minute flates of platinum are occasionally 
found among the gold. i. i 
In Burns and Party’s workings (half-a-mile to tlie nortli-west of Clarke and 
Joss’s), a red decomposing basalt rests on yellow sand which overlies ten or twelve feet of 
gravel in coarser and finer layers. The gravelly washdirt is irregularly cemented by 
brown hematite. It has gold throughout, which, however, can only be sa,ved from the 
unconsolidated portions. The bottom is of slate with numerous quartz veins. 
In Butler and McDonald’s Claim, a quarter of mile north of Burns and Party’s, 
a drive has been made under the basalt. On a bottom of decomposed .slate and grit is 
a eemeutod gravel about one foot in thickness. On this lies a gravelly wash, having a 
thickness of two feet and under. The washdirt occasionally has fiDecn feet of soft 
white sand above, and occasionally a few inches of fine siliceous silt beneath, as in 
Messrs. Clarke and Joss’s claim. A shaft above the workings passed through ten feet 
of basalt, fifteen feet of sand, and five to si.v feet of gravelly wash. I saw some good 
prospects washed from the dirt. Slates and greywackos are seen in the gulley, striking 
to W.N.-W. „ • 
In Eobinson and Anderson’s Claim, a quarter of a mile further north, a drive 
shows a very bouldery gravel from two and a-half feet in thickness and under, lying 
between the slate bottom and a fine white sand. The bottom is very uneven. In one 
place there is no sand or gravel between the basalt and slate. An open cutting south 
of the drive showed a fine white sand lying on from eighteen inches to two feet of fine 
gravelly wash with lumps of ferruginous cement at its base. The bottom was slate. 
The upper part of the gravel gave 2 dwts. gold per load, and the lower part none. It 
may be mentioned that Eobinson was nearly killed (on 4th January, 1888) by a native 
who attacked him with a tomahawk while he was engaged in laying down a rail. 
Sampson’s Claim is on an isolated hill about a hundred feet below the level of the 
others, and about half-a-mile east of Eobinson and Anderson’s. A shaft has been sunk 
through sixty feet of basalt and four feet of gravelly washdirt, and a tunnel had been driven 
from N.N.W. for 150 feet towards this shaft from the outcrop of the wash. The slate 
bottom is seen at the mouth of the tunnel. About fifty feet in there are two and a-half 
feet of gravelly washdirt capped by basalt and resting on a slate bottom. At this point 
the tunnel had caved in. A little sand was scon on the gravel a few feet short of the 
cave-in. I saw some very good prospects washed from the dirt taken from the sha t. 
The gold in the wash of the Terraces is always so fine that it is difficult to prevent 
some of it floating out of the prospecting dish. A few ounces of fine-grained stream tin 
always remain in the bottom of the dish, and the separation of this from the gold is a 
very tedious process — indeed, with the most careful manipulation a proportion o t e 
gold is always left in the residue of tin ore. 
Even at the edges of the drift from which the basalt has been denuded, washing 
by hydraulic pressure is impracticable, as the trees of the jungle would fall and obstruct 
the faces. But a convenient and unfailing supply of running water is always at hand 
for sluicing the gravel, which can be shot down to the sluice-boxes. 
The average yield from washdirt reported in Victoria for 1883 was 1 dwt. _0-32 
grs. ; for 1884, 3 dwts.; and for 1885, 1 dwt. 10-59 grs., per ton. I am certain that the 
terraces of the Eussell Eiver will give a much higher yield than this. Lhe b^ted 
Workings now opened up are likely to prove only the beginning of an industry w iic or 
many years to come will employ the energies of thousands of workmen. The basalt lett 
on the top of the ridge between Cooppooroo and Wairambar Creeks is a narrow tongue, 
on both sides of which the auriferous drifts which it has preserved from denudation are 
