a quantity of yellowish grains measuring, say, one thirty-second of
an inch in diameter, slightly adhering to each other, but separating
upon pressure of the finger, and around this a thick layer of hard
clay or mud of somewhat irregular shape. It immediately struck me
that the yellow substance might be gold, though I could not account
for the presence of it in the centre of the clay-balls.

I carefully scraped the granules out of the clay, and washing them
clean, placed them on a sheet of paper to dry in the sun. By this
time the attention of the other men had been attracted to what I was
doing, and it seemed to amuse the brave fellows immensely to watch
my painstaking efforts with the yellow stuff. I produced some fine
scales I had for weighing chemicals for my photographic work, and
suspended these above a gourd filled with water. Then I went down to
the creek and collected more of the clay-balls and scraped the mud of
one away from the solid centre of what I took to be grains of gold. A
fine thread I next wound around the gold ball and this was tied to
one end of the balance. After an equilibrium had been established,
I found that the weight of the gold was 660 grains. Next I raised
the gourd until the water reached the suspended ball, causing the
opposite pan of the scales to go down. To again establish equilibrium,
I had to add 35 grains. With this figure I divided the actual weight
of the gold, which gave me 18.9, and this I remembered was close to
the specific gravity of pure gold.

Still a little in doubt, I broke the bulb of one of my clinical
thermometers and, placing the small quantity of mercury thus obtained
in the bottom of a tray, I threw a few of the grains into it, and
found that they immediately united, forming a dirty-grey amalgam. I
was now sure the substance was gold and in less than five hours I