On the Gold Fields of Victoria or Port Philip

Abstract

General Description, Geographical and Geological .—A chain of mountains, or rather a series of distinct ranges, runs round the south-eastern corner of Australia, nearly parallel to the coast line, and from fifty to eighty miles from the sea, forming part of the main chain of the continent, and rising at its highest summit, Mount Kosciusko, to 6500 feet above the sea-level. This mountain chain in Victoria consists of clay-slates, mica-slates, and flinty slates, in successive steps, forming collectively a recurring series somewhat thus— The slates are nearly or quite vertical, with a north and south strike, and are intersected by numerous quartz-veins, running at an acute angle with the slates. Vast plains of trap, forming high table-lands, run up to the base of the mountains and probably cover their lower slopes. It is in the valleys and gullies of these mountains, and not very far from their junction with the trappean plains, that the rich deposits of gold are found. The auriferous districts are commonly broken by deep valleys and precipitous steeps. The hills are thickly forested; the soil poor and gravelly, and the surface strewn with angular fragments of white quartz. Gold-flelds .—Gold has been found at several points remote from each other along this zone of mountains; but incomparably the richest deposits hitherto opened in the Colony of Victoria, and indeed in the entire continent, are those of Ballarat and Mount Alexander, the latter far exceeding the former in extent and richness, while even the former is said by Californian