“There can be no fear, however,” says Mr. Silliman, (Report, p. 10,) “that there will be any failure in depth” (i.e., at an increased depth of excavation) “on these veins, either in gold product or in strength.  The formation of the country is on too grand a scale, geologically, to admit of a doubt on this point, so vital to mining success.”  Mr. Campbell, whose masterly survey and analysis of the whole gold-region forms, with the colored section accompanying it, the basis for a general and thorough understanding of the whole subject, adds (Report, p. 5) that “the yield per ton of such quartz when crushed cannot fail to prove highly satisfactory.”  And Mr. Chace, in the Preface to his Report on the Oldham District, (p. 6,) remarks, that, “if, as there are reasons for believing, the gold-bearing quartz of Nova Scotia is of sedimentary origin, in that case I see no reason why depth should cause any decline in the richness of the ore.  As yet, none of the shafts have been carried down sufficiently far to test this question practically,”—­he must, we think, mean to its fullest extent, since he adds immediately after, that, “as far as they have gone, the ore is very generally believed to have improved with increase of depth.”

Such, then, is a brief and imperfect description of the general character of one of the representative veins or “leads” of the gold-fields of Nova Scotia.  Of the extent and number of similar deposits it is scarcely possible at present to give any definite idea.  The line along which Mr. Campbell’s section is made out extends from the sea-shore at the south-east entrance of Halifax Harbor to the Renfrew Gold-Field, a distance a little over thirty miles to the northeast, intersecting in that distance no less than six great anticlinal folds.  The points at which the east and west anticlinal lines are intersected by north and south lines of upheaval form the localities in which the quartzite group of gold-bearing rocks are brought to the surface, and it is here that their outcroppings form the surface of the country.  The official “Gazette” for January, 1864, enumerates nine of these districts as already under a course of active exploration, namely, Stormont, Wine Harbor, Sherbrooke, Tangier, Montague, Waverley, Oldham, Renfrew, and Ovens.  When we add, in the words of Mr. Silliman’s second conclusion to his Report on the Atlantic Gold-Field at Tangier, “that the gold-bearing veins already explored on this estate alone are in number not less than thirty, and that there is every reason to expect more discoveries of importance, as the results of future explorations, already foreshadowed by facts which have been stated,” enough, we think, will have been deduced, on the highest kind of scientific testimony, to bear out our opening statement, that there exist in Nova Scotia veins of auriferous quartz practically inexhaustible, by any known methods of mining, at least for the next two hundred years.