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shopkeeper, laborer, shepherd, artisan, law, physic, and divinity, are all here.

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You meet men you have not seen for years, but they recognize you first, for even your most intimate friends are scarcely to be known in their disguise of costume, beard, and dirt.

'Welcome to Golden Point!' 'Ah, old friend! hardly knew you. How are you getting on?' 'Did nothing for a week; tried six holes and found no gold. My party, disheartened, left me. I found another party; sunk eighteen feet until we came to the quartz, and dug through it, and now I have reached the blue clay. It is a capital hole; come and see it,'

"Imagine a gigantic honeycomb, in which the cells are eight feet wide and from six to twenty-five feet deep, with the partitions proportionately thin, and to follow a friend to find a hole in the very midst is dangerous work

'Lightly tread, 'tis hollowed ground.'

"The miners move nimbly about, with barrow, pick, and bag, swarming along the narrow ledges, while below others are picking, shoveling, and heating the

stove.

"No danger, sir; our bank is supported by quartz. We've got to the gold at last. Made an ounce yesterday. There was a man killed yesterday three holes off; the bank fell down on him as he was squatting down this way, picking under the bank, and squeezed him together. His mate had his head cut, and was covered up to the throat.'

AT THE COMMISSIONER'S TENT.

893

"Down the shady excuse for a ladder, half the way, then a jump, and the bottom of the capital hole is gained. Nearly four feet of red sand formed the upper layer, next a strata of pipeclay, below which lie the quartz boulders; then a formation of quartz pebbles, with sand impregnated with iron; this penetrated, the bluish marl is reached in which the vein of gold is found.

"Down among the men washing there is nothing to be observed. The work is earnest-no time for talk.

"The commissioner has a busy time in issuing licenses. His tent has the mounted police on one side, and the native police on the other. The black fellows are busy tailoring; one on the broad of his back, in the sun, with his eyes shut, chanting a monotonous aboriginal dity.

"Three men are waiting their turn with the commissioner.

"I say, Bill, this here's rayther respectable okipashum-that cove with the specs is a first-class swell in Melbourne, and there's a lot in the same party with him. The greatest nobs are all the same as uz snobs! I saw Mr. from the Barwon here this morning: he found his shepherd in a hole getting gold, an no mistake! He comes with his brother to have a turn with the rest; but when he saw him he looked non-plushed, and said to himself, "Well, I can't go down to this," and I believe the fool started back; but come, it's our turn now.'

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"The evening shadows fall, the gun from the commissioner's tent is fired, the signal for digging to cease, the fires blaze up, the men gather round them for their evening meal, their smoke floats over the trees as over a city, the sounds of labor are hushed, but are succeeded by loud voices and ringing laughter, mingled with the bells of the browsing oxen, and the dogs baying more loudly as the darkness grows more dark. A party of gamblers are staking each a pinch of gold-dust on the turn of a copper. The native police, lithe and graceful as kangaroo-dogs, are enjoying a round of sham combat; one black fellow attacks with a frying-pan; the other pretends to shoot him with his knife: a painter might study their attitudes. Hark! to the sax-horns from the Black Hill floating to us across the valley; close at hand the sweet melody of German hymn in chorus rises; and then down from toward the river comes the roaring chorus of a sailor's song. The space and distance mellow in one harmonious whole all the sounds; and as we retreat they fall upon one wearied with hard labor, like the rich hum of an English meadow in harvest time.

"A flash! a bang! another! now platoon-firing, become infectious: the sounds of war mingle with and overpower the music."

Sunday at the Diggings." The warm day terminated in a bitter cold night, and a storm of snow and hail ushered in Sunday; for we are 1,200 feet above the sea. On the Sabbath digging and washing gold cease; but the axe and the hammer ring continually,

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