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Updated: May 28, 2025
The whole having been thrown up by volcanic action, is based on a strong foundation of granite and other igneous rocks, which are exposed in many places in the shape of massive blocks; otherwise the hill-range is covered in the upper part with sandstone, and in the bottoms with alluvial clay.
The soil is composed of alluvial deposits, to a depth of from twenty to fifty feet; and I have myself seen, near New Orleans, trees lying in the horizontal position six or seven feet below the surface. This valley has been frequently visited by earthquakes, which have sometimes changed part of the channel of the river, and at others formed lakes.
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.
The place had been selected by the Doctor, and is now the site of the flourishing town of Goderich." The lower town comprises a few acres of alluvial flat, only a few feet elevated above the river. This piece of land was destitute of trees or stumps, and had evidently been cleared many years ago by the Indians, who had cultivated it with Indian corn.
When the fruit-trees began to bear, then I lived in luxury, for in this alluvial soil all trees flourish, to that it is a pleasure to see them. I have pears which ripen their fruit twice in a year; all the young ones make fresh shoots at St. John's day, and the others bear every year.
They were never discoverers, never pioneers, but, following quickly upon the heels of the white prospectors, they frequently succeeded in securing the richest claims in the alluvial beds, and from the first they were hated with an instinctive racial hatred, that became inveterate when the whites found in Sin Fat a rival antagonistic in all his tastes and views, in most of his virtues, and in all his pet vices, bar one.
This, then, may explain not only the comparatively greater purity of the alluvial gold, but also why big nuggets are found so far from auriferous reefs, and also why heavy masses of gold have been frequently unearthed from among the roots even of living trees, but more particularly in drifts containing organic matter, such as ancient timber.
Sometimes also the alluvial gold, coarser in size than true reef-born alluvial, is derived almost in situ from small quartz "leaders," or veins, which the grinding down of the face of the slates has exposed; these leaders in time being also broken and worn, set free the gold they have contained, which does not, as a rule, travel far, but sometimes becomes water-worn by the rubbing over it of the disintegrated fragments of rock.
Distant single mountains or buttes serve as landmarks in a brush-grown, gently rising, strongly rolling country. Occasional alluvial flats draw back to low cliffs not over twenty feet high. After the junction of the Tsavo, palms of various sorts replace to a large extent the forest trees. Naturally also the stream widens and flows more slowly. Outside the palms grow tall elephant-grass and bush.
For they had been picked up on the streets and wharves of San Francisco, discharged sailors, broken-down miners, helpless newcomers, unemployed professional men, and ruined traders, to assist in ploughing and planting certain broad leagues of rich alluvial soil for a speculative Joint Stock Company, at a weekly wage that would have made an European peasant independent for half a year.
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