CHAPTER X.
THE VICTORIA GOLD FIELDS.
Discovery
of gold—Streets paved with gold-—Another hundredweight— Effects on
labour—Official returns—Intelligence from the mines—Ballarat
—The
Pyrenees—Melbourne—Mount Alexander—Prospects of Victoria— Route to the
diggings—Forest Creek—The auriferous fever—The Governor his own
groom—Reversed positions—Lake Omeo—The gold region— Mount Blackwood—New
and extensive gold fields.
On the
25th of August 1851, Lieut. Governor Latrohe wrote from Melhourne to
Earl Grey that large deposits of gold had been found in the colony,
thus proving the extension of the New South Wales gold field throughout
the great dividing range, "Victoria forming its southern extremity.
Three localities were first discovered,— Clunes diggings, where gold was found
in an alluvium of decomposed quartz rock; Buninyong, or rather
Ballarat, by which name the locality is best known, where gold was
imbedded in compact quartz; and at Deep Creek, only sixteen miles from Melbourne, where the precious metal was found in contact with slate rock. It was afterwards dug up in the city of Melbourne itself.
Governor
Latrobe having issued a proclamation, and made arrangements for
granting licenses similar to those of New South Wales, the population
poured forth from the city and
