Crab holes

Definition of crab holes

Holes often met with in the bed-rock in alluvial mining. They have the appearance of having been formed by eddies of water. Crab-holes on the surface are in general due to the unequal decomposition of the underlying rocks.

After rains cray-fish are found in the muddy water and mud.

In the basaltic plains, as well as in the palaeozoic country, these holes occur, and are often the cause of serious accidents.

See Dead-men’s graves, Bay of Biscay Country. – The Gold Fields and Mineral Districts of Victoria, 1869.

From William Howitt’s Land, Labour, and Gold, 1853

From this place we went over a flat country with a rich soil, admirably calculated for agriculture, a fat soil, and not the picturesque, being what farmers look after. In a couple of miles, or so, we got out of the fences, but were immediately met by new difficulties in what are called Crab-holes and Dead-men’s Graves.

These are all connected with volcanic agency, and abound, as well as the basaltic masses of stone, in volcanic districts. Crab holes, or Frog-holes, as they are called in some districts, from land crabs and frogs frequenting them when they hold water, are small pools or quagmires some few yards across, more or less, but so scattered about over certain places that it is next to impossible to pass between them, and as to going across them with your cart, that is out of the question. They are often of unascertainable depth of mud, and are supposed to be occasioned by fissures in the volcanic rock beneath, through which the water has been originally sucked down, as it were, carrying the earth with it, and leaving these holes on the surface, which in time have become glutted with mud, probably, as it has been baked in the summer, and so made capable of holding water. This is the case even with large volcanic craters, which instead of fire now hold lakes.