A VISIT TO THE WESTERN GOLDFIELDS.
BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER
No. 11.
MOST of the reefs on the Louisa basin appear to be V reefs or wedge-shaped, and in
reefs of this character the gold has usually been found in the cap or near the surface. As
the entire basin has been formed by the result of aqueous action, it is probable that the
auriferous portions of the reefs have been long since destroyed, and that the gold with
which they were once enriched must be sought for in watercourses now obliterated, and
in the lower levels.
On examination it will be discovered that a large sheet of water once covered a portion of
this flat, as there is a defined line of elevation, higher than which gold has not been
obtained in payable quantities; and it will be further observed, that in sinking on the flat
the miner penetrates a series of strata similar in character, but varying in their colour and
appearance, which have been deposited by successive floods; and it will be also observed
that the detritus has travelled but a very short distance, as the fragments of the
neighbouring rocks, of which it is mainly composed -- are angular, and not water-worn.
In following the Louisa through the mountains to the falls, several places occur where it
is evident that rocky barriers have been but recently removed; as these obstructions wore
destroyed the accumulated waters fell, and the lagoon was reduced to its present
diminutive stream.
The channel of the Louisa through the mountains was everywhere payable, and many
points exceedingly rich. Every square foot has been turned over by the miner, from
Hickey's Point to the falls. It is reported to be exhausted, and is deserted by all excepting
one old Salt and his mate, who have been on that part of the creek for the last six years.
The former still declares that he will not give up the ship. His caboose is the most
unpretending edifice in which any man in the Queen's dominions resides, who spends
£500 a year, which common report lays to his charge.
The main stream, in its progress to the falls, receives several small ravines and gullies on
each side, some of which have been turned over by the digger, and have remunerated his
labour. As you advance, others occur which have not been yet tried. It is remarkable that,
higher than a certain line, these watercourses have not been found productive, and that
this line corresponds with the elevation at which payable gold has been found on the flat.
M'Carty Gully descends from the mountain on the eastern verge of the plateau to Louisa
Creek. Poverty Gully takes an opposite direction from the same mountain, and falls into
Lewis' Ponds; and St. Clair Creek descends from the ranges to the north-east, and falls
into the Louisa near Hickey's Point. These have been worked, and found payable, the
middle portions having been the most productive. With these exceptions mining
operations have been confined to the basin of the Louisa.
Ascending the highest summit in the ranges, to the south-west over the Louisa, you find
yourself looking down upon the Meroo, 2000 feet below. A cluster of white spots in the
valley mark the large encampment at Maitland bar, to which a mountain road leads from
the heights which surround the basin of the Louisa, the lowest portion of which is several
hundred feet above the river. Beyond the Meroo the country for 30 miles appears to be a
perfect chaos of broken ranges; to the north and north-east beyond these, level plains
bound the horizon, to which the hills gradually descend. To the westward the country is
equally broken, but more elevated, and Burrandong Mountain is distinctly visible.
The summits of the ridges on the northern bank of the Meroo are some hundreds of feet
below the level of the plateau on the southern bank, the basin of that river forming a
boundary to the table land which extends from the Blue Mountains to this point in a
north-west direction, and to the south-west stretches away to the Canobolas. This
immense plateau is alike in its geological character and its elevation, and is intersected in
various parts by deep valleys and chasms, all taking a westerly course. These immense
channels, with their attendant mountains and precipices, have been formed by the
drainage of the surface waters, to whose accumulated powers the schistose formations
could offer no effectual obstruction in their passage to the less elevated western regions.
A considerable number of pretty homesteads are scattered over the ridges in the basin of
the Louisa, each claiming its patch of cultivated enclosure, and many of the gardens are
well stocked with vegetables and fruit trees. Under the northern rim of the basin near
Lewis's Ponds, a small street has been established, close to the company's old works, and
here are two or three stores, mechanic's shops, a public-house, and a post-office; further
along the Government has purchased the offices of the late company, and here the
assistant-commissioner has established his head-quarters, occupying in propria persona
the pretty box once tenanted by the company's manager. Further ahead, on the slope of
the hill, the clergyman of the Church of England and the sub-commissioner find
themselves at home; and, passing three or four cottages and tents, a picturesque little
church, beautifully situated on a green mound, peeps through the mimosas. This is a
sweet spot, and does infinite credit to the taste of those who devoted it to so holy a
purpose; it is to be hoped that the green sward conceals no golden treasure, or if it does
that it may never be disturbed.
On the opposite side of the ridge, on a flat, the neat Roman Catholic chapel attracts
attention -- not quite so ornamental in its style of architecture, or so choice in its
situation as the church; and aloof up the ridge on a wild moorlike spot, stands the stern
looking Presbyterian meeting-house, all by itself, and looking down upon its neighbours;
it seems to be used to the hills, and prefers to stand alone.
At the point terminating the central ridge are a number of cottages, having some
pretensions to be rated as a village; including two stores, two public houses, and a
butcher's and baker's. There is another butchering and baking establishment on the flat,
but all find trade enough to keep them busy. There is no land yet sold in the vicinity, but
there is a pound, and several diggers' horses, who occasionally damage the gums and
mimosas on the table land, are incarcerated accordingly. There are two schools -- one
under the National Board, and the other recently opened under the Denominational
system.
The population of the Louisa is chiefly composed of settled families, or old stagers who
have outlived their rambling propensities. In round numbers they may be estimated at 360,
of which about 150 are diggers; the remainder are women, children, officials, tradesmen,
and mechanics. It is a dull place, where people vegetate as usual in the bush; the crawling
hours drag heavily along. A stray nugget will now and again wake up the community, but
not often. There are no great hauls now, those days have passed for the Louisa; but every
man who works steadily can support a family in comfort. Should the present
circumscribed field become exhausted, the entire district is pregnant with golden
treasures; it is almost impossible to go wrong in search of it. Few here make less than an
ounce a week, many make much more; and some limit their labours to their necessities,
secured by the permanent character of the diggings.
The miners and inhabitants generally are beginning to be extremely anxious for the sale
of the public lands in this locality. They are desirous of settling down, and making
permanent homesteads; traders would perhaps be benefited by the establishment of
townships, but these would be of little service to the diggers; small farms of from ten to
twenty acres are more in unison with their wishes, where they could employ themselves
at such seasons as are unfavourable for gold-digging, and not be subjected to the
temptations surrounding country villages. Such homesteads would relieve the gold-digger
from much of that uncertainty, which, under the present system, is inseparable from his
condition, and presses most heavily upon the women and children of his family. The
mother of a family never knows when her husband goes forth to labour, whether he will
he remunerated for his toil; she is in a constant fever of anxiety -- and in this feeling
may originate much of that drunkenness which disgraces our gold-fields
The possession of small farms would ensure a subsistence, and would render men more
disposed to develop the auriferous resources of the lands in their immediate
neighbourhood. No man would leave his home so long as he could obtain the means of
support in his own district. Price is not at this moment so much an object as possession. It
is quite possible to alienate the public lands, reserving the colonial property in all
minerals, with the power of working them, or compensating the owner for any damage he
may sustain. It is monstrous that the population of a country should be in no way bound
to its soil, and that while they are surrounded as they are here by thousands of acres of the
finest agricultural land, unoccupied by man or beast, provisions should be at prices
unequalled in any rural district under heaven, in the midst of one of the finest seasons that
we have experienced for years. The following are the current prices: -- Flour £34 per ton,
maize 20s. per bushel, hay £20 per ton, butter 3s 6d. per lb., milk 1s. per quart, eggs 3s.
6d. per dozen, fowls 10s. per pair, cabbages 4d, each, pork 1s. per lb., beef 5d.
mutton 6d. lb., peas 5s. per peck, onions 1s. per lb., potatoes 3d, per lb. A sale of town
allotments will not remedy this crying evil; it will not bring wholesome provisions
within the reach of the poor, neither will it add to the comfort or contribute to the moral
improvement of the mining population.
It has been universally found in new countries that those who had everything to learn on
their arrival have been eventually the most successful. A saying is current both in the
Canadas and the Western States, that "the emigrant capitalist farmer must first be
ruined before he can succeed,"
and experience justifies the assertion. Our friend the
capitalist is disgusted at the slovenly operations carried on by the old hands, and declares
his intention of showing them what farming is, in fact, he means to astonish the natives.
He has inspected the map of the district at the surveyor's office and selected his location,
and having engaged artificers from the nearest town, and built a house perfect in all its
arrangements, he removes his family to their future home; and now commences his
labours. His fields are laid out with every respect to geometrical proportion, and should a
clump of timber intervene he will grub it up, or if an ugly swamp occupies one corner he
will have it drained, although he has acres of better land, that requires no drainage,
unemployed. But then this particular spot spoils the symmetry of his field, and he is
rather glad of an opportunity of displaying his skill in making barren land productive. He
hints at magnetic streams, and tells learnedly of the mystery of subsoil drainage and
ploughing; his fences are neat, and his gates perfection: his place is a perfect gem.
Harvest times comes round, and his crops are good, as far as they go, but then the
grubbing up of that patch of scrubby timber in the south corner of his field, and the
thorough drainage of that swamp by which he reclaimed at least two acres of ground, and
the making of his neat fence and pretty gates, all consumed so much time, that although
he had four men at work the whole year, he has only fifteen acres under crop. The corn at
length finds its way to market, where the price is so wretchedly low that the whole
proceeds will not pay interest on his outlay -- his capital is diminished, Next year it
diminishes still further; the year following it disappears, and he is a ruined man -- he had
learned farming in a county where land was dear and labour cheap, and he could not
divest himself of his early prejudices.
A rough old settler took up the next section about the same time; he came from the West,
somewhere out of the bush, driving a bullock dray containing all his goods and chattels,
of which his wife and three or four "screechers,"
a couple of old ploughs,
half-a-dozen axes, and four bags of corn meal, formed the chief part; he had two boys, but
they were following behind, bringing up the old brood mare and half-a-dozen cows, and
the woods re-echoed their savage yells. The next day the 'axe resounded'
through the forest, and the boys were seen with the bullocks dragging in immense logs,
which they deposited on a high bank over a creek. Soon after, at early dawn, the English
neighbour was aroused by the sound of many voices; he looked out and saw a mob of
rough people making for the old settler's camp. They went right up to the pile of logs, and
commenced chopping and sawing, shouting and cooeying; all appeared confusion, and to
make matters worse, the old man dragged a keg from under his rag of a tent, round which
they all congregated. The English neighbour now went to see how his men were getting
on at the swamp, and returned at sundown, when, casting his eyes towards the creek,
instead of the pile of timber, there stood a capacious log hut, and the settler's wife
standing at the door. The mob were there still, noisy and as merry as ever. Some wore
stretched on the grass, others playing cards on an old log, and a few of the youngsters
romping with a lot of girls who had gone there to improve, the opportunity, and they, too,
got up a dance. It was only a "bee,"
and the old settler's house had just cost him
two gallons of grog and grub for all hands. --
He was a queer old fish, that. It was the fourth bee he had called in his time, -- on four
different occasions he had taken up land and surrounded himself with comforts, but he
never could refuse a good price for his homestead, and there were always plenty of
buyers. He has been cunning enough to secure the best section; two-thirds of his land is
open prairie; he did not buy from a map as he does not understand such gear; he has
swamps here and there it is true, and some barren patches; but he knows that in that
country land is plentiful and cheap, and labour scarce and dear, and that the fee simple of
one acre of land is only equal to one day's labour of himself and his boys. He now
commences to plough -- when he comes to a barren patch he gives it a wide berth; if he
meets with a swamp he passes it by, and in two months he has thirty or forty acres broken
up; but it is an ugly piece of work, so much disfigured by islands of stones, and scrub,
and reedy swamps his land looks as if a number of small clouds hung over it and
darkened the green sward with their shapeless shadows. Winter has now come on, his
boys and himself are splitting rails day after day, at last the lads begin to haul in the stuff,
and the old settler runs up a zig-zag fence as fast as they can lay down the rails; he has no
eye for beauty -- no regard for symmetry; sometimes he encloses two or three patches in
one fence, but he generally follows the margin of the ploughed land, to the ineffable
disgust of his more scientific neighbour. Crop time at last arrives, and a busy time he has
of it wife, children, boys, bullocks, and all. He has forty acres under crop, and his yield
per acre is only a little less than that of the man of science. He obtains the same miserable
prices, but his expenses are light, and he has a large surplus. He has not expended £50 in
improving ten shillings' worth of land, neither has he tasteful buildings, neat fences, or
pretty gate's. Every year he improves a little in these particulars, but his greatest anxiety
is to get land broken up and within his rails. If he does hire hands it is to plough and reap.
His eye is not educated to beauty; if he was a hundred years on the same farm he would
never be so neat as his unfortunate neighbour, but then he would get the crops, and
consequently the money.
Agricultural success is attained in a new country, thinly populated, not by obtaining the
heaviest crops from the smallest quantity of land, but by raising the largest crops with the
least possible expenditure of capital.