ing was in many places very shallow, and the soil
was sometimes of a clayey description, sometimes very gravelly with
slate bottom, sometimes gravelly with pipeclay bottom, sometimes quite
sandy; in fact, the earth was of all sorts and depths.

At one time there were eight thousand diggers together in Eagle Hawk
Gully. This was some months before we visited it. During the period of
our stay at Bendigo there were not more than a thousand, and fewer
still in the Iron Bark. The reasons for this apparent desertion were
several.

The weather continued wet and uncertain, so that many who had gone down
to Melbourne remained there, not yet considering the ground
sufficiently recovered from the effects of the prolonged wet season,
they had no desire to run the risk of being buried alive in their
holes. Many had gone to the Adelaide diggings, of which further
particulars hereafter, and many more had gone across the country to the
Ovens, or, farther still, to the Sydney diggings themselves. According
to digging parlance, "the Turon was looking up," and Bendigo, Mount
Alexander, and Forest Creek were thinned accordingly. But perhaps the
real cause of their desertion arose from the altered state of the
diggings. Some time since one party netted 900 pounds in three weeks;
100 pounds a week was thought nothing wonderful. Four men found one day
seventy-five pounds weight; another party took from the foot of a tree
gold to the value of 2000 pounds. A friend of mine once met a man whom he
knew returning to Melbourne, walking in dusty rags and dirt behind a dray,
yet carrying with him 1,500 pounds worth of gold. In Peg Leg Gully, fifty
and even eighty pounds weight had been taken from holes only three or four
feet deep. At Forest Creek a hole produced sixty pounds weight in one
day, and forty more the day after. From one of the golden gullies a
party took up the incredible quantity of one hundred and ninety-eight
pounds weight in six weeks. These are but two or three instances out of
the many that occurred to prove the richness of this truly auriferous
spot. The consequence may be easily imagined; thousands flocked to
Bendigo. The "lucky bits" were still as numerous, but being
disseminated among a greater number of diggers, it followed that there
were many more blanks than prizes, and the disappointed multitude were
ready to be off to the first new discovery. Small gains were beneath
their notice. I have often heard the miners say that t