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In lieu of the expected freedom, his ingenuity was rewarded with close confinement and other punishments. Thus ended the first idea of a gold-field in those colonies. In 1841 the Rev. W. B. Clarke expressed his belief in the existence of gold in the valley of the Macquarie, and this opinion was greatly confirmed by the observations of European geologists on the Uralian Mountains.
Thus commenced the gold diggings of New South Wales. The good people of Victoria were rather jealous of the importance given by these events to the other colony. Committees were formed, and rewards were offered for the discovery of a gold-field in Victoria. The announcement of the Clunes Diggings in July, 1851, was the result; they were situated on a tributary of the Loddon.
As the gold on this circumference is found in coarser grains than in the streams running toward the centre, or Tete, I imagine that the real gold-field lies round about the coal-field; and, if I am right in the conjecture, then we have coal encircled by a gold-field, and abundance of wood, water, and provisions a combination not often met with in the world.
Nothing gave him greater delight than an expedition of this nature to what he termed his gold-field; it had for him, as he would explain, all the excitements of mining without the inconvenience and the distance. He never knew how much was there. For a certain period a pocketful could be picked up in five minutes.
Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field, the good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City Cave, and advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and finding a guide who knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from Murphy the next morning.
Almost immediately after the issue of the proclamation another gold-field was discovered on the Turon River, also a feeder of the Macquarie, only a few miles from Lewes Pond; and shortly afterward a third was opened up on the Abercrombie, a tributary of the Murrumbidgee, which takes its rise in the Cordillera, south of Bathurst. By the beginning of June, gold began to pour into Bathurst; but Mr.
Shoring up being little known, the miners are not infrequently buried alive.... This Ophir, this California, where every river is a Tmolus and a Pactolus, every hillock a gold-field does not contain a cradle, a puddling-machine, a quartz crusher, a pound of mercury."
And yet, although it had now sunk to the level of any other arduous and uncertain occupation, and the magic prizes of the early days were seldom found, something of the old, romantic glamour still clung to this most famous gold-field, dazzling the eyes and confounding the judgment. Elsewhere, the horse was in use at the puddling-trough, and machines for crushing quartz were under discussion.
But if you had been brought up in a Chinese camp, on a worn-out gold-field, your own special acquirements, and corresponding ignorance, might run in grooves similar to Yabby's. Let each of us keep himself behind the spikes on this question of restricted capability.
They surrounded him and demanded to see the gold in his basket. As the town policeman was sauntering up the street, Pop felt safe in refusing. The boys, also observing the officer of the law, contented themselves with retaliating in words only, "Say, Pop," cried one of them, "you'd better keep an eye on your gold-field.
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