done on the hilltops or ridges, because, owing to denudation by ice or
water which have bared the bedrock, the outcrops are there more exposed,
and thence the lodes are followed down through the alluvial covered
plains, partly by their "strike" or "trend," and sometimes by other
indicating evidences, which the practical miner has learned to know.

For instance, a lesson in tracing the lode in a grass covered country
was taught me many years ago by an old prospector who had struck good
gold in the reef at a point some distance to the east of what had been
considered the true course. I asked him why he had opened the ground in
that particular place. Said he, "Some folks don't use their eyes. You
stand here and look towards that claim on the rise where the reef was
last struck. Now, don't you see there is almost a track betwixt here and
there where the grass and herbage is more withered than on either side?
Why? Well, because the hard quartz lode is close to the surface all the
way, and there is no great depth of soil to hold the moisture and make
the grass grow."

I have found this simple lesson in practical prospecting of use since.
But the strike or course of a quartz reef is more often indicated by
outcrops, either of the silica itself or ironstone "blows," as the
miners call them, but the term is a misnomer, as it argues the easily
disproved igneous theory of veins of ejection, meaning thereby that the
quartz with its metalliferous contents was thrown out in a molten state
from the interior of the earth. This has in no case occurred, and the
theory is an impossible one. True lodes are veins of injection formed
by the infiltration of silicated waters carrying the metals also in
solution. This water filled the fissures caused either by the cooling of
the earth's crust, or formed by sudden upheavals of the igneous rocks.

Sometimes in alluvial ground the trend of the reef will be revealed by
a track of quartz fragments, more or less thickly distributed on the
surface and through the superincumbent soil. Follow these along, and at
some point, if the lode be continuous, a portion of its solid mass will
generally be found to protrude and can then again be prospected.

There is no rule as to the trend or strike of lodes, except that a
greater number are found taking a northerly and southerly course than
one which is easterly and westerly. At all events, such is the case in
Australia, but it cannot be said that either has t