Transcription

318
GOLD   STATISTICS

VICTORIAN   DIGGINGS

 

DESCRIPTION OF SHAFT SINKING ON WHITE HILL
 
When the party arrived at the White Hill Bendigo all the bed Claims on the Creek had been taken up. The [they] found a party of Californians on the hill side, who had sunk a shaft, and had passed through in sinking this shaft a quartz vein on their passage to the washing stuff below which was situated between the quartz Vein and the bed rock - This process had been new at these diggings although, at this time pretty well known, & understood every where in the Victorian, & New South Wales Mines.
The Californians, who have the credit to introduce this system of shaft sinking to the level of the bed workings, on the river or Creeks of these Colonies, had opened a shaft six feet one way, by twelve feet another, and forty seven feet
deep: here they came upon the bed rock, they had encountered a bed of quartz of nine feet thickness, this they blasted with gunpowder, passing through this they came upon a white soil, through which they sunk the shaft until they came upon the bed rock.
The white soil varies in depth in some tunnels from three to five feet, which is brought to the mouth of the shaft, and then raised in a tub by a windlass.
The party having consulted upon their future prospects, immediately decided upon securing a claim in the dry diggings, & adopted the Californian System - They sunk a shaft as above described, and were fortunate enough to find sixteen ounces of gold in the first tub full of earth which they took from the washing Stuff -  They have taken large quantities of gold from their Claim, & have already tunnelled eighty feet in one way to a height of Say six feet, They Can see the gold in the working Stuff above them.
When the men Came up from their work they look more like millers than gold diggers. this is owing to the white soil they are working in -  While in the mine they use Sperm Canoles -

 

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