GOLD IN THE AUCKLAND ISLES.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XIV, Issue 1089, 4 December 1857, Page 4

GOLD IN THE AUCKLAND ISLES.

{From the Lyttdton >Times, Nov. 11,) The reported presence of goia in our province may give the following remarks great interest ; they are furnished by a medical gentleman whose racy and practicable observation have already been favourably received by the public in the original form, entitled, "Perils, Pastimes, and Pleasures of an Emigrant in Austi alia.' ' The author of them visited all parts of the Calitbrninn gold fields. "The geological structure of this group (the Auckland Isles), is well deserving attention. Nenrly the whole may be termed of volcanic oiigin. The old formation of 1 granite, schist, and limestone, have in many instances been highly metamorphosed by trap, porphyry, siennite, and serpentine, and where the rocks are exposed, as they are in many parts round the coast, the quartz nature of the veins, which more or less intersect them, would indicate that they are highly metalliferous. In some instances, the basaltic columns rise to the height of 3000 feet perpendicular, and exhibit all the phenomena of that kind of eruptive formation, while the mountain which may be said to cap Laurie Harbour, rises as high as 9000 feet, with but few undulations between its base and the water's edge. On the top of this mountain, and along a considerable portion of its sides, are groups of basaltic rocks, which below in the ravine', indentations, and valleys, may be seen the usual detritus of such structural formations. The rivers are numerous and rapid, which might be imagined from the surface of the land being rocky, abrupt, and undulating." Pagp 118.— "Great desire to re-visil the Auckland group, if it be merely to re-examine the geological j formation. The sketch I sent you corresponds exactly I with the structural formation ot several parts of Sierra Nevada, and I have not the slighest doubt but gold will I be found there the same a» elsewhere." j