This was all news to us, or if we had heard of it before we had not given the subject any attention.  A new light broke in upon us, and we began to consider.

“Breakfast is all ready,” said Smith, just at that moment.

We had brought a few luxuries with us from Melbourne that were unknown at the mines, and I saw the eyes of the inspector sparkle as he snuffed the perfume of the fried potatoes and warm chocolate.

“Will you join us, Mr. Brown?” I asked, extending an invitation that I knew he was dying to receive.  “We have not much to ask you to share, but such as it is you are welcome to.”  “Well,” he answered, “really, I don’t know as I feel like eating at so early an hour, but—­”

Smith opened a hermetically sealed tin canister, which he had been warming in a pot of hot water, and the steam of fresh salmon greeted our olfactory nerves.

“What!” cried the inspector, with a look of astonishment, “you don’t mean to say that you have got preserved salmon for breakfast?”

“If you will really honor us with your presence at breakfast you shall he convinced of the fact,” Fred answered, politely.

“Say no more; I’d stop if all Ballarat was at loggerheads.”

We were soon seated upon such articles as were handy, and after the first cravings of our appetites were satisfied, we renewed the subject of mining.

“All the miners,” Fred remarked, “are not obliged to work so deep beneath the surface.”

“If they do not, their chance of finding gold is exceedingly slim,” replied the inspector.  “I have known stout, lazy fellows pick around on the surface of the earth for weeks, and not earn enough to find themselves in food.  To be successful a shaft has to be sunk.”

“And yet, according to your own showing, gold is not always struck by such a method.”

“True, and I can easily explain why it is so.  Mining is like a lottery—­where one draws a prize, hundreds lose.  We might dig deep into the earth where we are seated, and it would surprise no one if we took out gold by the pound; and yet no one would think of laughing if we did not earn our salt.  The case would be so common that no notice would be taken of it.”  We sat and listened to the inspector’s words in silence, and began to think that we had better have remained in Melbourne and entered into business of a more substantial nature.

“I know of a dozen cases,” the inspector continued, “where not even enough gold has been found by industrious men, who have sunk shafts, to make a ring for the finger; and yet not one rod from the place where such poor success was encountered others have grown rich, and left Ballarat well satisfied with their labor.”

“But we have certainly read of men taking a nugget from these mines weighing over a hundred pounds,” I said.