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Updated: October 29, 2024
As this did not pay our tucker bill, my mate suggested we should sink another shaft, which we bottomed, and it turned out with similar results. Carolan had now sunk his second shaft with no payable results, and as I was dissatisfied with the result of my new venture, we both decided to go prospecting. This we did, dry-blowing in the ranges with no payable results.
A slight rain had fallen, insufficient to leave much water about, and yet enough to so moisten the soil as to make dry-blowing impossible in the ordinary way. Fires had to be built and kept going all night, piled up on heaps of alluvial soil dug out during the day.
This day we saw the last auriferous country we were to meet with until Kimberley was reached. Many traces of prospectors were visible here the last to be seen for many a day shallow dry-blowing holes and little heaps of sieved dirt, and the tracks of camels and horses. This was a piece of country worth trying, had we not had other objects in view.
But the very lowest depths of despair, cannot compare with the heights of satisfaction, attained after a successful day's "dry-blowing." A tripod, twelve or fifteen feet high, is set up over a hard and smooth piece of ground.
"He had considered the question of deep-leads of alluvial, and after visiting Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, and Kanowna, he thought it probable that there would shortly be a large output of alluvial gold from this source. In Coolgardie the dry-blowing had been confined to a very shallow depth, and yet close to Coolgardie in Rollo's Bore there was evidence of the existence of a very deep valley.
This cement is composed of angular quartz-fragments, broken from the reefs or veins, and fragments of diorite and hornblende schists, cemented together by lime; it is very hard and solid and, in places, continues to a depth of over twenty feet. The gold is extracted from these depths by crushing and dry-blowing.
Whilst on the subject of industries, I may mention that of obtaining solder from meat-tins by piling them into large heaps and lighting a fire over them. The melted lumps of solder thus formed were collected by the ordinary process of dry-blowing, and sold to tinsmiths and others engaged in the manufacture of condensers.
A part of the timber had already been cleared to admit of "dry-blowing" operations a process adopted for the separation of gold from alluvial soil in the waterless parts of Australia.
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