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In the gloaming I left the sheiling, and took my way through the hill, as we say, for McKinnon's house by the glen on the road to Birrican, and the first of that road is just plain guessing, but after, maybe, a mile there rises up the Mulloch Mhor, the big peak of the Island, and with that, a little to a man's left hand, the road to the sea is easy.

Let no woman go contrary to her instinct. At the foot of the huge mound of white mulloch which marked the site of the Pactolus Mine was a long zinc-roofed building, which was divided into two compartments. In one of these the miners left their clothes, and put on rough canvas suits before going down, and here also they were searched on coming up in order to see if they had carried away any gold.

At the lower end of the pass there is an engine-house in full working order, and a great plateau of slate-coloured mulloch runs out for some yards, and then there is a steep sloping bank formed by the falling earth.

Scattered over this pastoral-looking country were huge mounds of white earth, looking like heaps of carded wool, and at the end of each of these invariably stood a tall, ugly skeleton of wood. These marked the positions of the mines the towers contained the winding gear, while the white earth was the clay called mulloch, brought from several hundred feet below the surface.

Black Hill no doubt at one time deserved its name, being then covered with dark trees and representing a black appearance at a distance; but at present, owing to the mines which have been worked there, the whole place is covered with dazzling white clay, or mulloch, which now renders the title singularly inappropriate.

When they had returned to the light, the owner of the place took them through the crushing-mill attached, showed them the stone or mulloch, as it was thrust into the jaws of the devouring animal, and then brought them in triumph round to the place where the gold was eliminated from the débris of mud and water. The gold did not seem to them to be very much; but still there it was.