prepossessions in favor of mining. Stopping to examine, he found the
hills composed of granite, mica and quartz, the natural home of gold,
and his experience as a miner led to the conviction that though the
main body of the gold might have been already washed out among the
surrounding clay, yet enough remained to repay a careful search and to
indicate the existence, somewhere in the immediate vicinity, of a mine
of untold wealth. Several days were spent in unprofitable search: then
more favorable indications led the shepherds to dispose of their
flocks and set out in good earnest to dig for gold. A couple of
spades, a trowel and a calabash were their only tools, but our
adventurer was a knowing man, and "knowledge is power." His practiced
eye knew just where the precious metals would be most likely to exist
if at all in that locality--that in the old beds of rivers now dried
up gold would more naturally be found than in younger streams, and
especially that where round pebbles indicated a strong eddy ten times
as much gold might be expected as in the level parts. Gravel and
shingle were cleared away without examination, then a bed of gray
clay, as too porous to hold gold; but when a stratum of pipeclay was
reached the diggers knew that not an ounce of gold would be found
beneath, and their search was confined to a little streak of brownish
clay, about an inch in thickness, just above the pipeclay. Every
particle of this was carefully washed, and after hours of patient
labor the toilers were rewarded by about a thimbleful of the shining
dust they were so eagerly seeking. From this small beginning on the
10th of June, 1851, have grown the wonderful mining operations of
Australia; and in less than a month after the little incident related
above twenty thousand diggers--in a year increased to one hundred and
fifty thousand--were busy in the inexhaustible mines of that far-off
land; and so came those rugged, barren lands, hitherto scarcely broken
even by savages, to be peopled by men from every civilized land.