Cunard Cove, Riverport, Lunenburg Co., Nova Scotia, Canadai

Regional Level Types
Cunard Cove	Cove
Riverport	- not defined -
Lunenburg Co.	County
Nova Scotia	Province
Canada	Country

Beach placer deposit at Cunard Cove, Ovens Natural Park, presently yielding trace amounts of silt- to sand-size placer gold with substantial effort, rare sand- to 1 cm-size ferberite, minor coarse sand- to pebble-size scheelite, and major amounts of twinned and simple arsenopyrite crystals to several cm. These placer minerals were eroded from quartz veins in the Halifax Formation slates just above the Goldenville Formation sandstones. Both are part of the Cambro-Ordovician Meguma Group.

Discovered by James Dowling, Esq. on 13 June 1861 in a vein of quartz, 2 cm thick, on the bluff. A month later John Campbell discovered gold in the sand along the shore. It is estimated that 2000 ounces of gold were obtained until the end of 1862 (Hamilton 1868).

The chalcopyrite, galena, and sphalerite are visible only in polished sections. Based on the blue to cream color of fluorescence under short-wave UV light, some of the scheelite has a composition that ranges part way toward powellite, but no specimens containing 50 mole % or greater of the powellite end member have been verified by SEM.

Morelli et al. (2005) have dated bedding-concordant arsenopyrite at 407 +/- 4 Ma and bedding-discordant arsenopyrite at a similar 409 +/- 5 Ma.

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References