Transcription

DISCOVERY  OF GOLD IN AUSTRALIA

There can be little doubt that had the suggestion made by Sir Roderick Murchison in 1848 been acted upon that an earlier discovery of the Australian gold fields would have taken place, The discovery of Mr Hargraves in no way distracts from the credit due to Sir Roderick Murchison for having predicted, on Scientific grounds the gold existed in the Eastern Cordillera of Australia.

Letter addressed by Sir Roderick Murchison to the Duke of Newcastle , Belgrave Square
8th July 1853.

My Lord Duke - Having perused the papers relating to the recent discovery of gold in Australia, which have been published by Command of her Majesty, and presented to both Houses allusion to the part I took in the discovery, I beg to make the following statement, accompanied by a request with which I hope your
Grace will comply.
In the year 1844 I instituted a comparison between the rocks of Eastern Australia, specimens of which had been brought home by my friend Count Strzeleki [ de Strzelecki] and those of the Ural Mountains, with which I was personally acquainted. This comparative view was printed in the same year (1844) in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.
In the year 1846 I addressed Sir Charles Lernon, the President of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, at the anniversary meeting of that body, held at Penzance, and incited the superabundant Cornish miners to emigrate to the Colony of New South Wales, and there obtain gold from ancient alluvia, in the same manner as they extracted tin from the ground of their native
Country.
This communication, *in which I alluded to some  specimens of gold having been found (distinctly auguring that much would be discovered) was dated, as your Grace will perceive in the year previous to that in which the Californian gold was detected.
Returning from the Continent, after a long absence, in the year 1848, and finding that specimens of Australian gold one had been sent to me as an authority on the subject, I deemed it to be my duty to State my views to her Majestys Government in a letter dated 5th November 1848 addressed to Her Majestys secretary of State, Earl Grey -
And here I take the liberty of mentioning,l that as my memoirs of 1844 and 1846

*see Transactions of Royal Geological Society Cornwall 1846.

 

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