By a series of shafts with drives, or galleries, connecting them when they cut the vein, a more accurate estimate of the value of the reef can be made.

Now in the case of a reef which has rich shoots a prospector, naturally anxious to make his “show” as alluring as possible to any possible buyer, sinks his trial shaft, on the underlay, through the shoots.  And so it might happen, that by carefully selecting the sites of his shafts, he might have a dazzling show of gold in each one, and merely blank quartz between them.  A mining expert, usually only too ready to give a glowing report, makes his estimates on the assumption that the quartz intervening between the shafts is as rich as that visible in them, and the purchase price increases accordingly.

Not only do shoots occur to puzzle the expert, gladden the heart of the prospector, and madden the shareholder, but the eccentricity of gold is further exemplified by the way in which it has been been deposited in “pockets.”

No better example of this could be given than the Londonderry Mine, where gold to the value of many thousand pounds was won from quite a small hole in the outcrop.  At the bottom of this hole lumps of solid gold could be seen, and inasmuch as other pockets, equally rich, had been found, it was assumed by nearly all concerned that the reef was a solid mass of gold, and the whole community was mad with excitement.  However, when the purchasers started work, it was soon discovered that the golden floor to the golden hole only continued golden to the depth of three or four inches, to the despair of the promoters and unlucky shareholders, as well as of the numberless adjoining leaseholders, through whose property this rich reef had been traced.

It seems incredible that a vein should run in more than one direction, and yet it is made to do so, and to go North, East, South, or West, or to any intermediate point of the compass, at the discretion of those responsible for the prospectus!  An unmistakable surface outcrop is not popular amongst experts (it leaves no scope for the exercise of an elastic imagination), whereas they cannot be expected to see under ground, and can then make their reef run in the most suitable direction.

I do not think the much-abused expert is any more dishonest than other folk, though he has more temptation.  His bread and butter depends on his fee, his fee depends, not on the accuracy of his report, but on the fact, whether or no that report suits his employers.  If, as often is the case, he has to report on a “lease” whose only value is derived from its close proximity to a rich show, and if that rich show only appears above the surface in an isolated mass, and its direction of strike can only be guessed at, and, above all, if he knows that his fee or future employment depends on guessing that direction into the property under report, I think he has been led into temptations from which most of us are exempt, and which a good many would find it hard to resist.  The term “expert” refers only to the numerous army of “captains” and “mining experts” of mushroom growth, for which the soil of the goldfields is so suitable, and is not applied to the mining engineer of high standing, whose honourable and straight dealing is unimpeachable.