Not really disagreeing with anything you said just didn't think your interpretation of virgin or new ground follows what our interpretation might be in some circumstances.
The same can be said of modern Exploration reports. What's not financially viable to larger scale mining can still be of interest to us. While previously explored it's still virgin or new to us as amateurs.
Also that Exploration report did contain the usual several pages of analysed sample results from several different recorded areas within that larger area - along a section of creek front + some other areas of interest they had obviously identified (funnily enough the better runs were outside of their identified areas - dumb luck of the amateurs?). The author had also made mention of testing some samples on site & used those words so I assume along the creek section they also ran some test pans which only showed a few specs in some of them? I wonder how enthusiastically they got down into the crevices?
Overall with all their testing & sample analysis they deemed the area to be not viable & relinquished the EL.
To a lot of us that would indeed be considered virgin or new ground especially when the lack of gold to them could be worthwhile ground for us now to check as relatively unworked.goldierocks said:Lack of old diggings is not virgin ground, nor is it unprospected, it is simply ground where then old-timers did not concentrate their efforts because they found there was little gold there.
The same can be said of modern Exploration reports. What's not financially viable to larger scale mining can still be of interest to us. While previously explored it's still virgin or new to us as amateurs.
Also that Exploration report did contain the usual several pages of analysed sample results from several different recorded areas within that larger area - along a section of creek front + some other areas of interest they had obviously identified (funnily enough the better runs were outside of their identified areas - dumb luck of the amateurs?). The author had also made mention of testing some samples on site & used those words so I assume along the creek section they also ran some test pans which only showed a few specs in some of them? I wonder how enthusiastically they got down into the crevices?
Overall with all their testing & sample analysis they deemed the area to be not viable & relinquished the EL.