A VOICE FROM THE DIGGINGS.

The voices that have come from the diggings in California and Australia have hitherto been so loud and so many, that they have served only to confuse.  We have the image before our fancy of a vast crowd of human beings hastening over seas and deserts towards certain geographical points, where they meet, struggle, fix.  We see them picking up lumps of gold from the surface, or digging them out of the earth, or collecting the glittering dust by sifting and washing; and then we hear of vast torrents of the precious metal finding their way into Europe, threatening to swamp us all with absolute wealth, and confound and travesty the whole monetary transactions of the world.  What we don’t see, is the gold itself.  We should like, if it were only out of curiosity, to feel a handful of it in our pocket:  but we grope in vain.  A sovereign costs twenty shillings, as before; and twenty shillings are as hard to come at as ever.  Nevertheless, we believe in the unseen presence of that slave-genius, who lends himself, with a sickly smile, to the service of mankind, and buys when we think he is sold!  We have faith in bills of lading, and accept without question any amount that is reported to lie dormant in the reservoir of the Bank of England:  only we wonder in private whether the importations of the precious metal are likely to increase permanently in greater proportion than the population in this quarter of the globe, and the spread of taste, comfort, and luxury, calling every day new arts into existence, perfecting old ones, and distributing wealth throughout the constantly widening circle of talent and industry.

But our present business is with the diggings and the diggers.  We have often wished we could interrogate one of those unquiet spirits in the manner of Macbeth—­’What is’t ye do?’ How do you manage?  By what signs do you know a locality that is likely to repay your pains?  What are your instruments, your machinery?  What do you conceive to be the prospects of your singular trade?  And, in fact, our curiosity is at this moment to a certain extent gratified:  a Voice has been wafted across the ocean to our private ear, and, undisturbed by the thousand other tongues of the diggings, we can listen to an account, distinct so far as it goes, of the whole process of gold-hunting.  The voice emanates from Mr S. Rutter, of Sydney, whose experience has lain both in the Californian and Australian mines, and we propose putting together, in as intelligible a way as we can, the rough hints with which we have been favoured.

Mr Rutter, on the 24th of May last, left Sydney for the Ophir diggings, with a party, including himself, of four individuals.  A sleeping partner remained behind, whose duty it was to furnish the means of conveyance for the first trip; but the four travellers entered with each other into a more precise agreement, the chief articles of which we give, as being common in such adventures:—­