McKay.— Eastern and Central Otago.

51

cement boulders from the older quartz drifts. Towards the line ofcontact with the older rocks to the north-west, beds of quartz gravelor grit alternate with the more slaty material, and in Ewing andMcConochie’s claim the lowest bed seen is a massive development ofquartz sand and grit. Mr. Gordon, in the above extracts which Ihave made from his reports of 1890—91, describes how the beds dipso as to pass at a varying but always high angle under the schistrocks forming the lower spurs of the Dunstan Mountains. In theeastern end of Ewing and McConochie’s claim the beds are nearlyvertical, while the sandstone gravels of the “ Maoi’i bottom,” althoughyounger, seem to be pushed underneath the more auriferous beds.Looking, however, at the section shown in the south-west end of theclaim, it is seen that the beds throughout are exceedingly disturbed,and that, except in a general way, little is to be learned from themere dip and apparent relative position of the different beds. In theBlue Duck Claim the auriferous beds are nearly vertical or inverted,the lower beds resting on those higher in the sequence, and passingunder the schist rock with a high dip to the north-west. There isless quartz drift showing in this than in Ewing and McConochie’sclaim, next to the south-west, but the reason of this appears to bethat the works have not so closely approached the fault-line as theydo in the other. There is again in this claim the appearance of the“ Maori bottom,” the beds forming it being unconformable to theauriferous bands. In the Sugar-pot Claim the wash is sometimesvery coarse, and all the beds are standing nearly vertical. Makinghere careful inquiries as to the occurrence of the white cement stones(• derived from the older grits, several examples embedded in the solid! wash 30 ft. or 40 ft. from the surface of the ground were shown to: me, and specimens said to come from the lower part of the 240 ft.prospecting-shaft ; and it was also stated that a great number of“ Chinamen,” or “ white Maoris, ” as these boulders are called bythe miners, were met in sinking the shaft. As to the dip of thestrata met with at this the greatest depth reached in this neighbour-hood, no definite information on this point could be obtained, but theprobabilities are that the beds return to the vertical and then dip tothe east under the higher beds of the same series and the “ Maori , bottom ” where the latter is present.

' Drybread, or Matakanui .—This locality shows a continuation to| the north-east of the auriferous deep ground at Tinker’s. The stratai consist of thick banks of clay with beds of slaty schistose shingle andj quartz grit dipping to the north-west, but at a lower angle than thedip of the same beds at Tinker’s. The auriferous bands may not beas rich as they are at Tinker’s, but there is certainly more materialfavourably placed for sluicing than at that place. The formation also