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diers mounted on duty. The inquest is now going on, and a facetious friend informs me the jury are determined to bring in a verdict of wilful murder against some one, but whether Lord Derby, Sir Edward Blakeney, or the soldiers, like all Irish juries, they are as yet undecided. I leave immediately for England, so believe me, faithfully yours,

JEREMIAH TUBBS.

No. 3.-From Miss Julia Tubbs, at Ballymactarbarry Castle, to Miss Fanny Jones, Woodbine Villa, St. John's Wood.

DEAR FANNY,-I have had such a delightful trip! and you, or any of our old schoolfellows at Mrs. Delaporte's seminary, would have thought the same, I am sure.

Our post-town is full of nothing but officers, tall and short, thin and fat; and there they lounge about the streets, having nothing to do but ogle the girls and look so delightfully bold-but à bas les militaires. On our way here, a tall, stout, very handsome gentleman, with a beautiful face and such a duck of a pair of moustaches, got into our railway carriage. He was very attentive to both mamma and myself, joked papa much, and invited John over to his property to "slate" the snipe (as he expressed it). It was, therefore, only natural papa should invite him over to our castle, which he accepted, you may be sure, particularly as a certain lady, who shall be nameless, threw in her support to the invitation. His name is Lucius O'Loghlin; and though the name sounds rather bizarre to our English ears, I can assure you I shall have no objection to becoming Mrs. L. O'L. at the fitting opportunity. He has a rather provincial way of talking, calling "I" "oi," and "my" "me," and all his "a's" he pronounces like "r's ;" but you soon get accustomed to it. Then he is such a noble fellow; he told me one day he would shoot every man that came between him and his love for your humble servant, with no more thought than he would a quail or a woodcock, while he looked so fierce, just like Ajax defying the lightning! He is very talkative and amusing, but after dinner, when he and papa have sat rather too long over their wine, nothing will prevent his singing his national ballads, and more particularly that one of "Who fears to speak of ninety-eight?" and he does so in a very loud and unmusical key; but he has promised me to give up all these naughty habits of drinking when he is married, and to be a dear good hubby. He has an immense property in the north, and is a great friend of Lord Eglinton's and the Duke of Leinster's; and when we are married, we are to have a splendid mansion at Merrion-square, in Dublin, and I am to be presented at the Lord-Lieutenant's levees, and go to all the balls and parties. Hark! I hear the dear creature humming an Irish air, which is the signal for our walk in the shrubbery; so, with every kind wish, believe me always affectionately yours,

JULIA TUBBS.

P.S. The wretch!-the false-hearted villain!-the lying impostor! Lucius is no gentleman at all, but only a pawnbroker's errand-boy! Oh, Fanny! I am broken-hearted, and shall never survive the cruel injury! The wretch has written a cool and impertinent letter to papa, to he has instructed his solicitor to commence an action against me for a breach of promise.

say

PP.S.-Lucius is off. Four silver spoons, two of papa's best shirts, and John's diamond studs, are missing.

DIGGING FOR GOLD.

THERE are now twenty-six well-defined gold regions that have been discovered in Australia; twenty-one in New South Wales, and five in Victoria. The greatest of these are Turon and Ophir, in New South Wales, and Mount Alexander, in Victoria. Turon and Ophir being on tributaries to the Macquarie river, which fall into the latter from opposite directions, at a very short distance from one another, and the interval being all auriferous, they may perhaps be considered as one and the same district; so also with regard to a district lower down the Macquarie, which would reduce the actual gold districts of New South Wales to twenty. The gold district of Meroo, although upon another tributary of the Macquarie, is in a totally distinct transverse valley; and that of Dubbo, or Digagunny, also upon the same river, is so remotely connected, both physically and geographically, with the others, as to make them constitute decidedly separate regions.

Looking at these gold regions, districts, or placers, as far as they are yet known, one of the first points that strike the observer is their grouping at considerable geographical distances one from another. Thus we have, northwards, Kentucky, Hamilton, and Cockburn, placers with which the Buddle may be associated, all in New England, within an area of 100 miles. Then we have the great central diggings of Ophir, Turon, Meroo, Macquarie, and Digagunny, nearly 200 miles to the west of south; next the Abercrombie, the Narrawa, Lambton Creek, and Mount Fitton, nigh a hundred miles south of this. All these districts lie on the western side of the hilly and mountainous ridge of New South Wales, or at least in regions where the waters flow westward. The Hamilton placer is the only exception; it lies at the head of the Apsley, which flows eastward. Then we have the isolated placer of Bungonia, on the picturesque Shoal haven; the Araluen, Bigbadja, and Bunyan group, the first on the Dena river, flowing eastward, the two last on the remotest sources of the Murrumbidgee; the two isolated placers of Bomballo and Jenoa; that of Albury, on the Murray; and finally, the great groups of Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and Mount Blackwood, in Victoria, and the solitary but rich and extensive placer of Lake Omea—a whole group run into one. The two groups of Victoria are only rivalled by the Turon and Ophir, in New South Wales; but hitherto they carry off the palm for productiveness and concentration. It must not be omitted, that four isolated gold districts have been found at remote distances in the north. The first, on the Canning Downs, near Mount Sturt, is upwards of 150 miles from the group at the head of Peel river; the second on Stanley Creek, a tributary to the Brisbane, off Moreton Bay, nigh a hundred miles north-west of the last; the third, called Burner, or Burnen Placer, about sixty miles to the north-west of the latter; and finally, a placer in Grafton Range, 160 miles west of this. We thus perceive that the gold districts of Australia are actually diffused over a region of upwards of 1200 miles in extent!

The district at the head of Peel and Apsley rivers, and north of Liverpool Range, is marked in the map attached to Count Strzelecki's valuable work, the "Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land," as being entirely eruptive and composed of crystalline rocks that

have been upheaved amidst superincumbent sedimentary deposits. Liverpool range is decidedly granitic. The gold district of Ophir and Turon, at the head waters of the Macquarie, is another isolated region of similar physical characters. It is evident that the riches of this central gold district have not yet been fully brought to light, for the basin of the Cudgegong is included within it, and yet has not hitherto been determined to be auriferous. The Cudgegong Company might, however, have as good a chance as many another, and, notwithstanding its repulsive name, better than some that have been adopted, apparently, without a single scientific datum, or even a practical fact of actual discovery in their favour.

The Abercrombie placer is at the southern foot of the same geological region, the culminating points of which are Mount Lachlan and Canabolas; the latter attaining an elevation of 4461 feet. The Narrawa diggings are in upper sedimentary rocks, and are derived from that portion of the Blue Mountains which is represented by the culminating points of Mount Fitton, Mount Dixon, and other surrounding hills of erystalline formation. A mass of crystalline rocks, chiefly granitic, protrudes to the eastward of the Blue Mountains at Shoalhaven. The placer at Bungonia owes its existence to this geological peculiarity. The gold districts of Araluen, and those at the sources of the Murrumbidgee, do not appear to have been explored by Count Strzelecki. The latter, indeed, to judge by the map of Arrowsmith, attached to the "Further Papers relative to the Recent Discovery of Gold in Australia," are most incorrectly placed in Strzelecki's map; as they take their origin, not from the western slope of the great Australian axis, but from uplands to the east of the anticlinal line, and at a distance, at one spot (called Jenabroda, or the Brothers), of scarcely twenty-five miles from the ocean, to rejoin which they have to flow upwards of 700 miles. There is no other example of a similar hydrographical phenomenon in a country which rather abounds in peculiarities of that description. The Bigbadja diggings are at the point in question. The diggings on the Snowy and Jenoa rivers, and the great deposit of Lake Omea (a secluded mountainenvironed sheet of water 3700 feet above the level of the sea), and those in the high uplands from whence the Murrumbidgee derives its furthest sources, are all connected with the great granitic group of which Mount Kosciusko, the highest mountain in New South Wales, forms the culminating point, attaining an elevation of 6500 feet. The diggings at Albury, on the Murray, which has its sources from the western foot of Mount Kosciusko, are apart from, and yet associated with, the same system. The two other great placers in Victoria-those of Mount Alexander and Ballarat-occur both, in hilly or mountainous districts, where rocks of igneous origin have upheaved, dislocated, and metamorphosed, superincumbent quartzites, clay-slates, sand-stones, and iron-stones. It may be remarked here, that there occurs in Australia a mass of porphyritic granite-a granitic structure of quartz and mica, with large, oblong, and irregular crystals of felspar, confusedly embedded in the masses-which shows evident traces of a flow, similar to that of a nappe de basalte. It presents very often the appearance of an intumescent paste, and forms extensive tracts in New South Wales, more especially at the Vale of Clwyd, at Guantewang, Gidley, Ellersbie, Lake

Omes, Wilson's Promontory, Clark's Island, Black Range, Ben Nevis, and Eldon Range, and which being nowhere associated with either mica slate, gneiss, or other metamorphic rocks, may evidently be ransacked in vain in search of the precious metals.

Mr. Stutchbury, government geologist in New South Wales, has carefully explored the great mining district at the head waters of the Macquarie river, the whole area of which, he says, may be considered as schistose, with quartz in veins or lodes parallel to the strike of the schists. Where the quartz is auriferous, there is also titaniferous iron; nor have any of the washings yet yielded gold without the iron-sand (incorrectly termed emery) accompanying it.

Mr. Stutchbury's evidence is decidedly in favour of the production of the gold detritus by causes daily in action, in opposition to the theory propounded by Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, that "the auriferous gravel is in no way to be confounded with detritus formed by present atmospheric action, and is the result of ancient powerful abrasion of the surface of the rocks, particularly when mammoths and other great extinct animals were destroyed "-a kind of revival of the long-exploded diluvial hypothesis of Buckland, which received its coup de grâce from the evidences afforded by the existence of an antediluvian alluvium in the plains of Shinar and Babylonia, where the fathers of men first congregated after the subsidence of the Scriptural deluge. This hypothesis was combated in reference to the views entertained by Sir Roderick I. Murchison, in vol. xci., p. 438, of the New Monthly Magazine, and in reference to those held by the Rev. Mr. Clarke, of palceontological constants of the auriferous deposits in New South Wales, in vol. xciii., p. 360, of the same magazine. We do not allude to the production, or rather elimination of gold in sitû, which is undoubtedly a geological phenomenon, associated with particular catyclysms recognisable and determinable by evidences, either mineralogical, palceontological, or physical; but to the production of the auriferous alluvium, or detritus only. This is what Mr. Stutchbury says in favour of our views :

Gold, in small quantities, has been found on the summits and upon the flanks of the mountain ranges, but, with few exceptions, it bears evidence of abrasion. The largest produce in every instance has been found in the lower levels. Assuming that the auriferous deposits originated in the quartz rock, there is no difficulty in accounting for its presence most abundantly in the ravines, gullies, and creeks, so numerous in this remarkably broken country. The shistose rocks, so readily acted upon by the atmosphere, constantly disentegrating, and exposing the quartzose dykes, leaves them unsupported, and, gravitating downwards, the largest blocks are crushed and crumbled in their onward course, letting loose the tenacious gold in large or small portions, which, in obedience to their gravity and the force of the impelling torrent, rolls on until it is arrested for a time in hollows, or the cleavage fissures of the slaty rocks, or quietly deposited in the sand or mud, as the case may be, by the cessation of the flood, until it is again removed by the repetition of similar causes, or it may remain for ages undisturbed, by the torrent taking another course, of which there are so many instances, leaving ancient bars of shingle débris, now covered by accumulated soil. It therefore follows that gold, even if it be of the earliest geological origin, may and will be accumulating in the lower levels so long as mountains waste and valleys exist for its reception.

This appears to us to be perfectly clear and unanswerable. We have

shown that the Americans regulate the price of quartz crushing and grinding by the proximity to the surface of the ore, and by the degree that it has been exposed to meteoric influences. The French geologists appear to entertain but one opinion, which is, that "la roche aurifère a été desagrégée par l'action des pluies, du soleil et de l'atmosphère; et le quartz s'y est délité." Mr. Stutchbury further adds, that it is not at all surprising that the precious metal should be so rarely found in its original gangue, as compared with the large quantity found in the limited areas of the earth's surface, if the mind is only prepared to grasp the immense amount of disintegration and consequent denudation, together with the lapse of countless ages which may have taken place since the removal of the first atom to the present time. "As a proof," continues the same geologist, "of the transporting forces (although scarcely necessary), I may mention that in the bed of the Summer Hill Creek, above and below Belarida, I found rounded blocks of fossiliferous limestone, which by careful examination I am convinced must have come from the mountain range between Summer Hill and Emu Swamp, thus traversing the tortuous course of the creeks, passing over precipitous falls through deeplyhollowed waterholes, and other impediments; and yet large portions of this limestone still remain as evidence of the power of these periodical mountain torrents. This single instance is sufficient to explain the abraded, battered, and water-worn character of the gold, and the general absence of any particle of its original investing but more fragile matrix."

In respect to the cataclysmal origin of the gold, it would appear from Mr. Stutchbury's report that there are evidences of at least two different epochs of elevation and disruption of igneous rocks in the same district; for, according to that report, most of the hills west of the principal gold-diggings are capped with basalt, which is also seen protruding from below, in columns supporting metamorphic rocks, at Bruno waterfall, and other places. "I find, by observation," says Mr. Stutchbury, "that the trappean rocks, such as basalt and porphyry, have arisen to the surface, projecting themselves through the schistose rocks." At a place called Frederick's Valley Creek, the protruding porphyry is seen, accompanied by a remarkable variety, composed of white compact quartz, with small water-worn grains or minute pebbles of transparent rock-crystal; and the gold found at that portion of the creek is larger grained and less water-worn than that found lower down. At one place Mr. Stutchbury found gold on the surface, intermixed with fragmentary quartz, in an ochreous earth containing a large proportion of crystallised titanic iron. The gold appeared to have never been water-worn in the slightest degree, and was evidently derived from the adjacent rock. This is an example of disintegration in sitû.

Lieutenant-Governor Latrobe, in a despatch to Earl Grey, dated Oct. 10th, 1851, describes the Ballarat placer, in Victoria, as occurring in "the ordinary quartz ore, iron, sand-stone, and clay-slate, which is so general throughout this colony." "Golden Point," however, where the principal workings at Ballarat have been opened, is described as presenting, both in aspect and structure, no feature to distinguish it from any other of the numerous forested spurs which descend from the broken ranges at the foot of the higher ridges, and which bound the valley of the Leigh on either side. A section of the workings showed under superficial soil: Sept.-VOL. XCVI. NO. CCCLXXXI.

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