washed
into the channels of ancient rivers, sent underground, "where Alph, the
sacred river, ran," by volcanic convulsions. Gold has been certainly
found down to 2,000 feet, and, as a shaft at Stawell has penetrated to
3,000 feet and will probably go deeper, it is impossible yet to fix the
lowest limit of underground finds. What with powerful rock borers and
especially by means of the wonderful diamond drills capable of
piercing at all angles, while cores are taken up and examined at every
few feet of progress, shaft-sinking and gold mining generally is fast
passing from a precarious lottery to a steadily profitable pursuit. The
value and probable effect' of the diamond drills cannot possibly be
exaggerated. The next great revolution was the discovery that pyrites,
which had been rejected as worthless, could, to a large extent, be
utilized with great profit. Accordingly every important gold mine has
now appliances for roasting and crushing pyrites. Through the courtesy
of Mr. Thompson, the able manager of the Walhalla mine in Gippsland,
probably the richest gold mine in the world, we were able to bring,
amongst other specimens, a sample of pounded pyrites ready for the
amalgamating process. On this Mr. Dixon will, doubtless, have something
to say. The difficulty of dealing with pyrites is the large quantity
of deadly fumes of arsenic evolved in the process of roasting. Tall
chimneys, to carry those fumes for dispersal in the higher atmosphere,
must be erected under heavy penalties, and the effect of the fumes on
vegetation were very apparent on the side of a steep mountain, close to
which rose the chimney of the great mine at Walhalla. Trees and
grasses, within the influence of the fumes from the flue, were withered
or dead. The Walhalla Valley, rich not in alluvial gold but in
gold-bearing rocks, differs essentially from the valleys between or at
the foot of low, rounded, water-worn hills at Castlemaine, Sandhurst,
Ballarat and other places, where scores of miles of alluvial sail have
been torn and turned over after a fashion which excites the
astonishment of the traveller. We could not help asking if any
approximate estimite had ever been attempted of the number of cubic
feet of earthwork involved in all the digging and re-digging by
Europeans, and the re-re-digging by Chinese over the gold fields of
Victoria. Oar friends only looked aghast at the idea of so utterly
hopeless an attempt. Our own belief is that a girdle of railway round
the globe would not be more than the equivalent. Next to the skeletons
of a burnt forest in Australia, the most awfully desolate of scenes, is
made up of the grave-like mounds scattered as thickly as leaves of
Vallombrosa over a deserted gold-field. As the mountains stood round
about Jerusalem, so do they stand round the gold valley of
Walhalla—real mountains and not water-worn hills such as are seen near
the alluvial gold fields which first made Victoria famous. From first
to last 50 millions of ounces of gold have been taken out of the soil,
worth 200 millions sterling. No wonder if at Ballarat and Sandhurst
great towns arose, and a vast city on the shores of Hobson's Bry, with
the rapidity which is more a characteristic of dream and romance than
of real life. Mr. Dixon notices that one nugget was found at Ballarat,
which weighed 184 lb., and for which over ,£8,006 were paid. We do not
know if he refers to ':the Welcome Stranger," found (at
Dunolly, however) by two Cornish miners, just when one of them had been
refused credit for a bag of flour and feared starvation for his family.
The scene was soon changed, as will be seen by the following details
taken from Sutherland's " Tales of the Gold Fields " :— " Deeson plied
his pick in some hard bricklike clay around the roots of an old tree,
breaking up fresh earth and tearing away the grass from the surface of
the ground. He aimed a blow at a clear space between two branches of
ihe root; and the pick, instead of sinking into the ground, rebounded,
as if tt had struck upon quartz or granite. 'Confound it!' he exclaimed
'I've broken my pick. I wish I had broken it, if it had only been over
some nugget.' A minute afterwards he called out to Oates, and told him
to 'come and see what this was.' It was a mass of gold cropping several
inches out of the ground like a boulder on a hill. As each successive
portion of the nugget was
