134 
THE PRINCE OF WALES MINE, WE HE A, 
By A. M. Howitt. 
The Prince of Wales mine is situated in the township of Wehla, on 
Jericho Creek, parish of Wehla, midway between the railway townships 
of Wedderburn and Bealiba. (Plate XXI.) 
The present lease is No. 5447 (area 26a. or. iop.), which takes in 
the old workings of the Prince of Wales and Adelaide shoots, besides 
a smaller reef to the east known as the Scotchman’s line. 
The Prince of Wales reef was first worked about the year i860, so 
I am informed ; at that time claims were limited to a frontage of 24 feet, 
but very rich yields were obtained and the reef was mined for a great 
width, as is now evidenced by the subsided and open chasm along the 
line. In 18=65, Mr. Nicholls was manager of the mine, and did a large 
amount of work at the levels above 150 feet on ore which is said to have 
paid dividends. One leader is stated to have been very rich, yielding 
coarse nuggety gold, one stone giving 80 oz. of gold. 
Subsequently Mr. Cato deepened the main shaft, which had been sunk 
to 150 feet by Mr. Nicholls, and carried it down to a depth of 300 feet, 
the water being managed with a. 6-in. lift. The country rock is strata of 
Ordovician age, and exhibits a certain amount of metamorphism due to the 
adjacent granodiorite which outcrops about half-a-mile away. On account 
of this contact-alteration a variety of rocks is seen, such as slates, schists, 
and indurated sandstones of varying colour, with an occasional bed of 
quartzite. These rocks are penetrated along certain fault lines by dykes 
formed of a rock which is probably lamprophyre. 
The reef channel strikes N. 10 deg. W. and dips 77 deg. W., and 
is formed along a fault fissure which can be distinctly seen cutting a 
synclinal fold (see transverse section). This channel is occupied by a 
large quartz reef with spurs dropping from the footwall, the whole for¬ 
mation occupying a great width and pitching north at an angle of 15 deg. 
The low angle of pitch allowed of the working of the formation for a 
length of 400 feet near the surface, the chasm along it, including the 
subsided portions on the north end, being 506 feet in length. 
The correct length of the shoot or payable portion of the formation, 
taken at right angles to the line of pitch, is over 100 feet; and on the 
pitch the quartz reef and spurs have been stoped out from just below the 
200 feet level up to the surface. 
The formation was richest where the footwall spurs were prevalent; 
the nuggety gold was found in these spurs, which cut 11 indicator ” slates 
with laminated bedded quartz veins. 
The reef at the Prince of Wales mine appears to have been formed 
by the infilling of a fault, which trends about N. 10 deg. W., with large 
massive quartz reefs. Subsequently the main fissure was displaced by a 
series of small faults trending in an easterly and westerly direction, and 
molten rock was then injected into the main and subsidiary fissures in the 
form of a lamprophyre dyke. In some of the cross faults the dyke cuts 
across the main reef, thus proving that the lamprophyre is younger in age 
than 'the quartz. A similar, but still clearer case, is described on p. 137. 
The intrusion of the dvke would cause a certain amount of small dis- 
j 
placements and fissures, which would account for some of the small spurs 
of quartz or cross leaders being formed between the main dyke on the 
east and the big reef on the west. 
