spade to break up the soil in every direction, each eager
to out-strip the other in the race for wealth. This region, however, did
not realise the expectations that had been formed of it, and many of the
diggers began to move northwards, in the direction of Clunes. But at
Clunes, also, there had been disappointment, for the gold was mostly
embedded in quartz rock, and these early miners were not prepared to
extract it; parties from Clunes were therefore moving southwards to
Buninyong, and the two currents met on the slopes of the Yarrowee, a
streamlet whose banks were afterwards famous as the Ballarat diggings.
The first comers began to work at a bend in the creek, which they called
Golden Point. Here, for a time, each man could easily earn from L20 to
L40 a day, and crowds of people hurried to the scene. Every one selected
a piece of ground, which he called his claim, and set to work to dig a
hole in it; but when the bottom of the sandy layer was reached, and
there seemed to be nothing but pipe-clay below, the claim was supposed
to be worked out, and was straightway abandoned. However, a miner named
Cavanagh determined to try an experiment, and, having entered one of
these deserted claims, he dug through the layer of pipe-clay, when he
had the good fortune to come suddenly upon several large deposits of
grain gold. He had reached what had been in long past ages the bed of
the creek, where, in every little hollow, for century after century, the
flowing waters had gently deposited the gold which they had washed out
of the rocks in the mountains. In many cases these "pockets," as they
were called, were found to contain gold to the value of thousands of
pounds, so that very soon all the claims were carried down a few feet
further, and with such success that, before a month had passed, Ballarat
took rank as the richest goldfield in the world. In October there were
ten thousand men at work on the Yarrowee; acre after acre was covered
with circular heaps of red and yellow sand, each with its shaft in the
middle, in which men were toiling beneath the ground to excavate the
soil and pass it to their companions above, who quickly hurried with it
to the banks of the creek, where twelve hundred "cradles," rocked by
brawny arms, were washing the sand from the gold.

#8. Mount Alexander.#--In the month of September a party, who had gone
about forty miles north-east of Clunes to Mount Alexander, discovered
near the present site of