hard work.

There are many ups and downs in gold-mining. Sometimes men will work
long and perseveringly, and earn little more than their food; but,
buoyed up by hope, they determine to go on again, and at last,
perhaps, they succeed. One day two men came into the bank with 120_l._
worth of gold, the proceeds of four days' mining on a new claim. They
had been working for a long time without finding anything worth their
while, and at last they struck gold. The 120_l._ had to be divided
amongst six men, and out of it they had to pay towards the cost of
sinking their shaft and maintaining their three horses which worked
the "whip" for drawing up the water and dirt out of the mine. When
they brought in their gold in a little tin billy, the men did not seem
at all elated by their good fortune. They are so accustomed to a
sudden turn of luck--good or ill, as the case may be--that the good
fortune on this occasion seemed to be taken as a matter of course.

One day, the manager and I went out to see a reef where some men had
struck gold. It lay across the bare-looking ranges at the north of the
township, in a pretty part of the bush, rather more wooded than usual.
The reef did not look a place for so much gold to come out of. There
were a couple of shafts, small windlasses above them, and two or three
heaps of dirty-looking brown quartz and refuse. I believe the reef is
very narrow--only from eight inches to a foot in width; the quartz
yielding from eight to twelve ounces of gold per ton. Thus, ten tons
crushed would give a value of about 400_l._ Though this may seem a
good yield, it is small compared with richer quartz. I have heard of
one mine which gave 200 ounces, or 800_l._, to the ton of quartz
crushed, but this was unusually rich.

At some of the larger claims the works are carried on upon a large
scale with the aid of complete machinery. Let me describe one of the
mines, close to Majorca, down which I went one day to inspect the
operations. It is called the Lowe Kong Meng mine, and was formerly
worked by Chinamen, but had to be abandoned because of the great
quantity of water encountered, as well as the accidents which
constantly happened to the machinery. The claim was then taken up by
an English company of Tributors, who pay a percentage of the proceeds
of the mine to the proprietor, the large Chinese merchant, Mr. Lowe
Kong Meng, who resides in Melbourne.

In some of the shallower workings the men go down the shaf