THE GOLDFIELDS OF SCOTLAND.

Dunstan Times, Issue 373, 18 June 1869, Page 3

THE GOLDFIELDS OF SCOTLAND.

(FROM THE “ EUROPEAN MAZE.”

The following is an extract taken from an account of the recent gold discoveries in Scotland, by W. Lawder Lindsay, M.D., F.R.S.E., F. L.S: —

“At the present high rate of wages for skilled labor, and with the present rude appliances for its collection, gold gathering in Scotland is not apparently remunerative as a regular and separate industry. It is remunerative only to those classes of the population the value of whose labor does not exceed 3s. per day, the wages of lead mining averaging 15s. per week. But the Leadhills miners find it a profitable occupation for their leisure hours, and they obtain a ready market for considerable quantities at prices varying from sd. to 7id. per grain=£l2 to £ls per ounce. Gold to the extent of 590 to 1000 grains is occasionally collected in Leadhills in a few days for the local proprietors. Those values and estimates refer exclusively to the leadhills district, Lanarkshire, in the Autumn of 1863. The prices quoted are for mere cabinet specimens or specimens for special purposes, collected to order—the lead miners possessing virtually a monopoly of gold collecting in their district. But the case is materially altered on the present Sutherland goldfield, where gold is collected for sale by a largo and miscellaneous class of diggers, most of them having gained a valuable experience in New Zealand or Australia. In Sutherland the market price of the native gold is only £4 per ounce, at which ratoit meets with ready sale on tiie spot, as well as in Inverness, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. There the largest nuggets yet collected range from Idwt. to sdwts., but the diggings are yet in their infancy, and much heavier “finds” may with confidence he expected when the weather, on the one baud, and the favor of local proprietors on the other, enable the diggers to carry out their operations on a suitable scale. Before it can be properly discussed how far or whether gold washing isdestined again to become anational industry in Scotland, it must he determined what is the extent and richness of tho Scottish goldfields. Present data are of the most npcrfect and unsatisfactory kind for determining this point. Many inprovements have been made of late years in the process of extracting gold from its matrix and drifts; their effect has been to render it remunerative to collect gold which exists in quantities formerly considered too small to be profitable to work. Hence, in so far as the processes hitherto adopted in Scotland have been of the most primitive kind, it is possible it may yet bo found expedient systematically to work on the most modern plan Some,- at least, of tho gold deposits of Scot land—those of Sutherland."