From a booklet written by Tony Bishop called "The Gold Hunters Guide to Nova Scotia" (there is also a pic of a mine shaft in W.H. from 1939 from the Public Archives of Canada):

"Wine Harbour gold district is situated on a harbour of the same name, so called because a vessel laden with wine once wrecked on the sand at the entrance. Gold was first discovered here on Barachois Cove in 1860 by Joseph Smith, upon finding specks of gold in the sand at the point where the Barachois lead touches the shore. The following year he found a small piece of gold quartz and was allotted a free claim here, on which he subsequently discovered the Smith lead. This vein was very rich and produced over six ounces of gold per ton of ore. Other claims yielded well, as on the Hattie, where five tons yielded 125 ounces. Altough mining was hampered by the small size of the individual properties, operations were such that the area had the highest output per man in any other area, but for the next three years production dropped quite steadily. The three well-defined sections of active mining were: in the eastern end, the Barachois mine with several profitable leads; 2500 feet to the west and 500 feet south the Charlotte an Eureka leads; another 2500 feet west finds a wide zone of productive leads including the Hattie-Mitchell, Desbarres, Plough and Caledonia. The Plough lead was so named because the first evidence of gold was found in a furrow by a man ploughing the soil. Here too, as in other areas, some extraordinarily rich drift has been found, for instance between the Barachois and Eureka properties and along the shore at Doody Head. Much of the mining here was by open cuts on the veins. Quite a bit of alluvial gold was also recovered, though the total yield was small compared to that of lode mining."