not begun. When capital and skill are brought to bear upon the process
of mining in Australia, it will become a regular, though by no means a
miraculously profitable business; and even at present, steady
labouring-men may spread themselves over thousands of miles of the
auriferous creeks, if they will be satisfied with a profit of seven or
eight shillings a day.

According to his experience, the place to look for gold is in the
neighbourhood of distinct traces of volcanic action, or in small
streams coming direct from hills of volcanic formation, or rivers fed
by these streams. An abundance of quartz (commonly called spar) is
universally reckoned an indication of the presence of gold; and if
trap-rock is found cropping up amid this quartz, and perforated with
streaks of it, so much the better. Sometimes the solid quartz itself
is pounded, and gold extracted by the aid of quicksilver. When the
gold is found in rivers, or on their banks, prediction is vain:
nothing will do but the actual trial by the wash-pan. But where there
is a bar or sand-bank, the richest deposit will always be on the side
of the bank presented to the descending stream. The metal in such
digging is almost invariably found in small spangles, that appear to
have been granular particles crushed or rolled flat by some enormous
pressure. In California, these spangles were the beginning of the
gold-finding. When the streams and their banks were well searched, the
crowds of adventurers tried, in desperation, what they could do by
digging deep holes in the plains; and there the metal was found in
such different forms as to indicate quite a different process of
deposition. Some of these holes were productive--although it was
severe labour to dig fifteen or eighteen feet through a hard soil
merely as an experiment; and in the course of time the plains were
covered with tents. The influx of adventurers continued; and the old