SOUVENIR-CHARTERS TOWERS, 1872 TO JULY, 1950 Page 17

5. A well-known jeweller used to handle some fairly large quantities of amalgam. On one night only a few ounces came in. This was placed in a small crucible, the coke was stirred up, and the pot was left to cook itself. The next morning. there was apparently not one piece of gold jewellery in the shop. Every article was coated with a splendid silvery sheen. The vaporis mercury had silvered every piece of gold in the shop.
6. When the Day Dawn P.C. was on the gold, much of it never saw the battery. The leakage was so great the Directors called in the police, and one miner, Dan (that wasn't his name) had been cutting quite a dash and was suspected. Arriving at the surface with a very valuable specimen in his coat pocket, and noting the intense stare of the two policemen on his bulging pocket, he paled and thus betrayed himself. The demons grinned, and did the cat and mouse act with poor Dan. Following him from bathroom to change room, they then led him to where his coat hung to question him. The specimen was gone. What surprise was shown by both parties! What had happened? The cunning old engine driver, wisely realizing the position, had, in the short interval between the ascent and descent of the cage, quickly left his perch, went to the coat, and hoisted the specimen.
7. An ardent specker (specimen hunter) working. among the rich stuff, was most precipitable in his rush to the face, after a cut was fired. On one occasion, a miscounted shot caught him bending and sliced a pound or so of good rump steak from his right buttock. This mishap necessitated several weeks' layup in the hospital. After his recovery and return to work, his intimate friends averred that his specking ardour was quelled not one jot.

Geology of Towers Charters

(By A. K. Denmead. )

CHARTERS TOWERS is built upon a foundation of granite. Bold outcrops of this rock are to be seen on Towers Hill and along the ridges that lie immediately north of the city. In the town itself granite is seldom seen, but it has been found in mine shafts and other excavations.

In the northern suburbs about Richmond Hill, slate and schist appear in places, though granite is still the dominant formation. Schist and quartzite cover an extensive area west and southwest of the town.

In some remote period in geological time the rocks which are now schist and quartzite were being deposited on the sea floor as mud and sand, but heat and pressure brought about by convulsions of the earth's surface have completely altered their character. Following upon the movements which brought about the changes in the earth's crust the molten under-layer, released from pressure, began to eat its way upward, engulfing the altered sediments as it advanced, until loss of heat caused it to solidify as a crystalline mass called granite.

The gold-bearing reefs of Charters Towers were deposited from hot solutions which welled upward along fissures in the cooling and contracting granite crust.

Gold is concentrated in well-defined areas within the reefs known as "shoots" which are characterised by an abundance of metallic minerals, such as iron pyrites, zinc blende (or "Black Jack") and galena (lead sulphide).

This phenomenan is not peculiar to Charters Towers-it is the rule wherever gold reefs are worked. The reason for it is sometimes fairly plain, but in Charters Towers, notwithstanding a wealth of theories it is still obscure. Until it is better understood no one can say that there might not be, at greater depths than have already been reached, a recurrence of those conditions which 'caused gold to be deposited in such prodigality as to make Charters Towers one of the richest gold fields in the world.