Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/251

 and H. Brown. Since that time the machine has been completed, and operations have been commenced. The works are situated a quarter of a mile behind the Third White Hill. The situation is chosen with great judgment, and certainly reflects great credit on the spirited proprietors. The system is an entirely new one on Bendigo, in fact, we believe, in Australia, although it is most extensively used in the Ural Mountains, where, notwithstanding the extreme poverty of the auriferous sands, a very large annual amount of the precious metal has been obtained. The motive power is steam, and the engine in use is an eight-horse power locomotive, and the peculiar style of washing is such as requires an immense supply of water; the Messrs. Brown have succeeded in obtaining it at an expenditure of something like five hundred pounds; the dam is a very large one, being about fourteen feet deep, and in some places sixteen feet, and is about three times the size of any dam on Bendigo.

The machine itself consists of a cylinder of iron pierced with upwards of three thousand holes, and strengthened on the inside by a strong iron trellis. The cone is about nine feet in length, and has a mean diameter of four feet and a half; it is larger at one extremity than the other, and is fixed on a spindle set in rapid motion by the engine. The wash dirt is carted up to the smaller end of the cylinder, and discharged into it down an inclined plane, and the water is raised by means of an eight-inch cylinder double-action pump, having 180 feet of four-inch iron piping, and discharged into a large reservoir, from which it is conveyed by means of four 4½ inch pipes into the small end of the cylinder, and are so arranged with regard to length as to afford a nearly equal supply of water throughout its capacity. The height raised is 25 feet, and the length the water is carried is about 180 feet

"When set in motion, the perforated cylinder makes twenty-five revolutions per minute, and consequently throws, by its centrifugal action, the water and finer particles of sand and gravel through the numerous perforations which it contains, whilst the pebbles and stones which are too large to pass through the holes