goods low, the weather alternating between rain and frost, the mines
overcrowded, and superfluous hands deserting them fast. They struggled
for awhile against these evil auguries; they even contrived, with
great labour, to pick up an ounce or two of gold; but at length,
losing heart, the party broke up on the 23d, and all went home but our
adventurer.

His geological and mechanical knowledge enabled him to obtain a
partnership with another band of gold-hunters then at work; and after
spending some days in _prospecting_ on account of the new concern, he
found 'a chink he liked the look of,' which appeared to have been
partially worked. Licences were accordingly taken out, the
commissioner being on the spot, and forty-five feet of frontage to the
creek were marked off. As soon as the river became a little lower,
they began in earnest to dig a race for turning the course of the
water. Their pump was made and fixed ready to drain; a dam was
emptied; six ounces of gold were obtained as an earnest of what they
might expect; and then it began to rain, and the creek to roar, and
the whole of their machinery was swept away.

Here was a new mishap: but these things will happen in the diggings;
and so our adventurers, agreeing to pay the commissioner a monthly
licence for their ground, intending to return in the dry weather to
work it, removed bag and baggage to another part of the river. Here
they dug away, but it appears with no tempting success; and they took
care to return to the commissioner in time, as they thought, to
implement their monthly bargain. On tendering the money for their
licence, however, they discovered that they were just half an hour too
late, and that the functionary had disposed of their forty-five feet
to another bidder. What to do now? They fell in with a man, an old