The place where the large mass of gold was found is an intersection between two quartz-ridges, rising from a high table-land in the midst of a congeries of mountains, offshoots from the range that extends from Wilson’s Point, on the south, to Cape York, on the north.  The clay soil covers many acres below and around the ridges, and wherever it was prospected by our adventurer, gold was found.  On the 12th of September, he reached Maitland; and here he found a letter awaiting him, which determined him to choose a new hunting-ground.  Some years before, it seems, a man he knew, who was at that time a shepherd in the Wellington District, while crossing the country on his master’s business, lost his way in the gullies, and did not find it again for two days.  While sitting down, in his dilemma, on a quartz-rock, he observed something glittering beside him, and breaking off with his tomahawk a piece of the stone, he carried it home with him as a curiosity.  At home it lay for years, till the reported discoveries of gold induced him to offer it for sale to a goldsmith in Sydney.  The result was, that he connected himself with a party of adventurers, and they all set forth for the place where he had rested among the gullies.  His companions proved treacherous; and when they had come sufficiently near to be able, as they thought, to find the spot without his assistance, they turned him adrift.  They sought the golden rock for three days—­but in vain; and he went back to Sydney, to invite Mr Rutter to accompany him.  Here ends our narrative for the present; and a most instructive one it is.  The search for gold, our informant tells us plainly, is a mere lottery, its results depending almost wholly upon chance.  Plenty as the metal is, it frequently costs twenty shillings the sovereign’s worth; and, in short, we are at that point of transition when the mania is dying away, and the science has not begun.  When capital and skill are brought to bear upon the process of mining in Australia, it will become a regular, though by no means a miraculously profitable business; and even at present, steady labouring-men may spread themselves over thousands of miles of the auriferous creeks, if they will be satisfied with a profit of seven or eight shillings a day.

According to his experience, the place to look for gold is in the neighbourhood of distinct traces of volcanic action, or in small streams coming direct from hills of volcanic formation, or rivers fed by these streams.  An abundance of quartz (commonly called spar) is universally reckoned an indication of the presence of gold; and if trap-rock is found cropping up amid this quartz, and perforated with streaks of it, so much the better.  Sometimes the solid quartz itself is pounded, and gold extracted by the aid of quicksilver.  When the gold is found in rivers, or on their banks, prediction is vain:  nothing will do but the actual trial by the wash-pan.  But where there is a bar or sand-bank, the richest