Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/121

 to be distributed, the variety of inclination observable within a limited space, or the unequal depth at which any given stratum may be found to lie below the surface. In some workings the pipeclay may be reached at the depth of 10 or 12 feet, in others not at 30 or upwards; in fact, there are hardly two workings, however close, which furnish similar sections. Gold has been detected in all the superior formations, even in the superficial soil. But by far the richest deposit is found in the small veins of blue clay, which lie almost above the so-called pipeclay, and in which no trace of the ore has been discovered. The ore is quite pure; it is found occasionally enrolled or water-worn; irregular lumps of various sizes, from a quarter of an ounce to two ounces in weight, sometimes incorporated with round pebbles or quartz, at other tunes without any admixture whatever, in irregular rounded or smooth pieces, and again in fused or regular masses. It is also found combined with quartz pebbles, evidently united to them whilst in a fused state, and on the surface of detached masses of iron sandstone, but in the greatest abundance in the clays, from which it is washed in the form of round or flattened grains, like sifted gravel or sand of various sizes. The seams of auriferous blue clay, the general position of which I have described, are found to be the most irregular in their deposits, and seldom more than four or five inches in thickness. They appear and disappear continually. The closest proximity to a rich