Mining and Geology

Dalmorton Quartz Mining Co [NewSouth Wales] – Original Manuscript Record of Formation and Original Share Issue – 21st October 1872

Gold bearing Quartz had been found by loggers in Northern New South Wales on the rugged road in the mountainous regions between Glenn Innes and Grafton.

Directors John Edge Manning, Thomas Miller, John Henry Seamer (Alderman and Timber Merchant), Charles Dawn and George Harley put forward a Prospectus for the Dalmorton Quartz Mining Co to exploit the resource. This manuscript … broadsheet folded and written over effective 3 then sides records the structure of the issue in terms of capital and proposed calls on initially partly paid shares and bears the no of shares allocated and signature and address of the original subscribers who total 70 in number.

From nothing Dalmorton rapidly became a thriving centre with up to a thousand miners and a town of 13 pubs, a school, 2 butchers, 4 stores, police station, stables, jail, post office etc. Ten years later discovery of gold at Mount Morgan and at Kalgoorlie drew miners away and the area went into decline. The town of Dalmorton was fully abandoned by the 1970’s.

Current day unlisted public company Revolution Metals Limited has reopened a number of prospects in the area and appear to be doing rather well.

Original Australian Gold Mining Company Historical Document – 1872

$140.00

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A Strange Career – The Life and Adventures of J. G. Jebb – 1895

John Gladwyn Jebb led as an adventurous life as could be possible. This book was compiled by his widow and carries the introduction of none other than possibly the greatest adventure writer H Rider Haggard.

English born Jebb’s adventures began as a military man in India. Soon he was conducting privately funded explorations into Central and Southern America. Involved in numerous business dealings… helped to start White Line … was in involved in armaments. He moved to the US and the Wild West … bear hunting, gold mining and a few conflicts with local bandits and Indians. Off to Mexico to make his fortune gold mining (made it and lost it) and much of the later part of the books is about his times in Mexico padded a bit with history of the region.

Published by Blackwood, Edinburgh in 1895 octavo, 271 pages, frontispiece of the great man, illustrated in a Victorian way by John Wallce. Pictorial boards nice but rubbed especially at the tips. Overall, still a particularly good copy of a book rather hard to find so.

Inspiration for Rider Haggard – John Jebb Adventurer

$50.00

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A Complete Treatise of Mines Etc – Henry Manningham – First Edition 1756

An extremely rare work from a period when mining expertise was as much a military endeavour as for the extraction of resources.

Lengthy title continues … extracted from the Memoires d’Artilliere. To which is prefixed, by way of Introduction, Professor Belidor’s Dissertation on the Force and Physical Effects of Gunpowder. Illustrated by a Variety of Copper Plates.

A first English language edition of this work translated and compiled by mining engineer Henry Manningham. The original French by P Surirey de Saint Remy (1660-1716). Benard Forest de Belidor (1698-1761) was a hydraulics and ballistics expert. Born into a military family he later became Professor of Artillery at Aisne. He became an early expert on the calculus and its use in solving technical problems.

Published by Millar, the Strand, London 1756. Octavo, xxix,168 pages with 21 folding copper engraved plates, elaborate engraved vignette on Dedication. Ex John Crerar Library with the odd stamp, later half leather binding somewhat worn, top edge gilt. Toned and pages a bit brittle still a useful copy of an extremely scarce item.

Early Mining and the Use of Gunpowder Carefully Explained.

$390.00

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The Iceland Journals of Henry Holland 1810 – Edited Andrew Wawn

The British had visited Iceland for many years, but little was written about it before this expedition.

Led by Sir George Mackenzie accompanied by a party of young Edinburgh scientists. Among them was Henry Hall, who later became a physician to Queen Victoria in London. Hall was 22 at the time of the expedition.

The object of the exercise was to explore and investigate several volcanic regions to contribute to the important and controversial mineralogical debate that was then taking place in Europe. There are three fundamental journeys … to Gullbringusfsala; the Snaefellsnes Peninsula and Rangarvallasyla.

On return Mackenzie published the first good account on Iceland for over forty years … “Travels in the Island of Iceland etc”. Henry Hall had kept a detailed diary which, never published was retained in family hands until gifted by them to a Reykjavik institution.

The author of this work, Andrew Wawn, carried out the sort of research expected of a Hakluyt contributor concluded that Mackenzie’s published work relied heavily on Hall’s manuscript without acknowledgement. Furthermore, Hall’s more detailed and in the moment account contained much missed by his illustrious leader … so here we have it.

Published by Hakluyt in 1987. Octavo, 342 pages after preliminaries. The extent of Wawn’s work in bringing this account to life is clear from the 70-page introduction. Then we have 200 pages of the text of the journals illustrated by numerous sketches made by Hall. Followed by several useful appendices. A very good copy.

Hall’s missing journals on Iceland 1810.

$50.00

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Geological Survey Cape York, Horn Island, Possession Island Queensland etc – C.F.V Jackson 1902 – Excellent Maps

Queensland Department of Mines Geological Survey Report No 180.

Report on a Visit to the West Coast of the Cape York Peninsula and Some Islands of the Gulf of Carpentaria also, Reports on the Horn Island and Possession Island Gold Fields, and the Recent Prospecting of the Cretaceous Coast of the Cook District.

By C.F.V. Jackson, Assistant Government Geologist.

Octavo, staple bound. 23 pages with images from photographs and four maps, a broader map of the regions and three folding coloured maps of the South Wellesly Islands (Bentick, Fowler and Sweers); the Horn Island Goldfield and Horn Island. Slight browning to map edges, still a very good copy of a scarce item. Good maps.

As often the geologist travels significant ground taking in Cox Creek, Wilkinson range, Mitchell River, Wellesly Islands, Horn Island, Possession Island etc with good detail on the topography of the land and various anthropological finds along the way. He discovered aboriginal middens of enormous proportions estimated to have taken several hundred years to form. He mentions bauxite at Weipa … to become one of the world’s largest deposits of that mineral.

Clements Frederick Vivian Jackson (1873-1955) was a very talented engineer, initially in the Civil file and then Mining. He designed an built bridges over the Bremer River near Ipswich and received the London Institute of Civil Engineers Prize for his bridge over the Burdekin an Charters Towers. He moved into the geology / mining filed and after conducting the work subject to this reports was involved in the geological survey of Western Australia. Returning to Queensland he rose to the highest position, that of State Mining Engineer

Scarce report on important locations with excellent maps.

$90.00

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The Antiquity of the Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania – The Discovery of Gold – Magnetism etc – Georgina King FRASA – Sydney 1924

A self-published pamphlet by Georgina King of work previously published in the “Sunday Times”. Printed by William Brooks, Sydney and issued in 1924.

Octavo, 23 pages, soft wrappers as issued, three illustrations in the text regarding aboriginals. Some age from use still a very good copy.

The articles are as per the title … The Antiquity of the Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania – Two Stone Ages in Australia; The Discovery of Gold and How it was Found in Payable Quantities; Magnetism – terrestrial and Universal; Diamond and Their Origin.

A most usual body of work. Georgina King (1845-1932) was an amateur geologist and anthropologist. As a woman she was excluded from the “professional” category e.g. she was not allowed to read her own paper at the Royal society of NSW. Her ideas were rather whacky though and make for interesting reading … they did not stop her becoming a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society. The daughter of Rev George King she was advised by him and naturalist Bennett not to marry if she wanted to get on in her chosen filed. She corresponded with Robert Logan Jack regarding geology and Huxley on natural sciences. In her eccentricity she blamed other for stealing her ideas, including Edgeworth David on her radical concepts of the earth’s formation and Einstein on the theory of relativity. She believed diamonds were fossilised marine organisms … quoting from the paper contained here …

“Diamonds existed as marine organisms. They are composed of pure carbon, containing only a little hydrogen, and the most minute particles are often found in what were small cavities, perhaps their breathing apparatus; some were like feathers. The cleavages of the diamond were the gills of those marine organisms …”

Her article of the aborigines is a lot more grounded. She was a friend of Daisy bates and provided financial support to Bates for her work among aboriginal people.

Georgina King isolated Australian Scientist with some wild ideas and some interesting ones.

$50.00

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Dalmorton Quartz Mining Co [NewSouth Wales] – Original Manuscript Record of Formation and Original Share Issue – 21st October 1872

A Strange Career – The Life and Adventures of J. G. Jebb – 1895

A Complete Treatise of Mines Etc – Henry Manningham – First Edition 1756

The Iceland Journals of Henry Holland 1810 – Edited Andrew Wawn

Geological Survey Cape York, Horn Island, Possession Island Queensland etc – C.F.V Jackson 1902 – Excellent Maps

The Antiquity of the Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania – The Discovery of Gold – Magnetism etc – Georgina King FRASA – Sydney 1924

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