Report on the Older Auriferous Drifts of Central Otago

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J. Mackay, government printer, 1897 - Geology - 119 pages
 

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Page 1 - I have the honour to forward to you my report on the district in which I have been engaged during the year ending the 31st March last.
Page 86 - These accumulations are so disposed that they are in a large measure — what remains of them — protected from being destroyed by ordinary denuding agents, being either overlain by younger deposits or involved between older and younger strata, so that the same result is effected. That their area in past times was much greater than at present there is abundant evidence in the disjointed scattered patches that are preserved and in the great abundance of cement stones ["sarsen stones...
Page 3 - This resolution was prompted by the extreme flooding that took place on the Boyer River in Harrison County in the vicinity of Missouri Valley, Iowa, during the latter part of February and the early part of March of this year.
Page 8 - This old rock basin is filled up with beds of conglomerate that dip to the east — (Fig. 6) — and as a rule the stones in the conglomerates get smaller toward the east, which, together with the direction of the dip, prove that the old tarn was filled up from the west. The conglomerates consist in great part of pebbles and subangular blocks of green quartzite and a dark purple jasperoid slate with quartz veins, which rocks do not exist nearer than the Tapanui mountains, west of the Clutha River.
Page 32 - Valley. Speaking of Millar's Flat as a probable gold-bearing area, Professor Hutton says : " As some of the places which I consider very promising, and certainly deserving of the special attention of the drift miner, I may mention the part of the old Clutha lake-basin in the angle where the Bendigo Creek enters, and along the foot of the range on which the Bendigo reefs occur. Also the extensive so-called Millar's Flat, between Arrow and Queenstown, which, to all appearances, represents an old channel...
Page 116 - ... in every case it has to be considered that we are dealing with a gold-bearing stratum which has to be prospected after the manner of a coal-seam.
Page 13 - September returning 2oz. 17dwt. of gold per ton, and doubtless there is some richer even than this. It has, however, been ascertained by experience that the gold is by no means evenly distributed, but runs in patches, without apparently any set rules ; so that any estimate as to the richness of the deposit from mere assays is nearly, if not entirely, useless. The blue cements of Weatherstone's are capped by red ones, which, however, are only due to the oxidation of the pyrites which has taken place...
Page 46 - Cromwell shovs that it has never been the outlet for a large body of ice ; and in the 'second place the lignite deposits under the township at Clyde must have been formed in still, shallow water, which could not have been the case if the Clutha then rolled through the gorge in the way it does now. It has already been said that lakes Hawea and Wanaka are terminated by low moraines, which pass gradually into the broad gravel plains lying beyond them.
Page 7 - Guily is a deep cup-shaped hollow in the schist rocks which has been filled up much higher than the present lips of the cup by gravels cemented into a hard blue conglomerate. This is the Blue Spur, famous for the immense quantities of gold that have been derived from it. On close inspection this hollow is seen to have been an old mountain-tarn with smooth polished sides, which have, however, now decomposed into a blue clay to a variable depth of from 2 in.
Page 44 - As none of the party had arrived on the ground at the time of my visit, during the second week of November last, full particulars with respect to what had been done could not be obtained.

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