Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/120

 The geological formation of the country would appear to be the ordinary quartz ore, iron, sandstone, and clay slate, which is so general throughout this colony. Golden Point, where the principal workings at Ballaarat have been opened, presents, superficially, 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; yet although it is now seen that the gold is to be found throughout the whole of the surrounding country, both on the ranges, in the flats, and in the water-courses, various causes would seem to have given this particular point a superficial structure, distinct from others in the neighbourhood, as far as they have been examined, and have made it the depository of a far greater quantity of the precious metal within a limited area than has hitherto been discovered. This particular structure, so far as it is now disclosed, would appear to be confined to the lower portions of the extreme slopes at the boundaries of the spur. Roughly slated, as a section of the working shows, there is under the superficial soil—first, red ferruginous earth and gravel; secondly, yellowish-red clay; thirdly, gravel quartz; fourthly, quartz pebbles and boulders, with masses of ironstone set in clay; fifthly, blue and white clay; lastly, pipeclay, below which none of the workings have as yet been carried.

Yet although such may be the general order of the strata, nothing is more striking than the irregularity of the proportions in which they are found