n. The
pleasant streets are rendered shady and attractive by long lines of
bordering trees. The mining here is carried on in the environs, not in
"every man's back yard," as is said to be the case at Sandhurst, another
famous mining point of which we shall speak further on. All the ground
upon which Ballarat is built, however, has been faithfully and
profitably dug over and passed through the sieve or over the
amalgamating tables. Surface mining is no longer prosecuted here to any
extent. These deposits are naturally the first to fail in
productiveness, but the neighboring hills are formed of a gold-bearing
quartz which is being crushed, night and day, by hundreds of powerful
machines; and the works still pay ten thousand miners fair day-wages,
besides giving the organized companies who employ them satisfactory
dividends. Thus mining has been largely robbed of its adventurous
character in this neighborhood, and perhaps also of most of its alluring
charm, having become a sort of regular industry, like coal-mining, or
even brick-making.

Ballarat being situated on elevated ground, the air here is particularly
bracing and healthful, so that Melbourne physicians sometimes send
invalids hither. It is plainly the centre of a former volcanic region,
and in many places near at hand extinct volcanoes can be counted by the
score,--some filled up to their summits with the debris of ages, some
forming deep depressions, and some filled with small lakes of bitter
water. There is plain evidence of these volcanic cones and craters
having discharged basalt, lava, scoria, cinders, and the like within a
comparatively modern period. The natives who were found in this region
had legends of eruptions having taken place hereabout, but as to how
long ago they could give no idea, having no means of measuring periods
of time.

Although gold-mining, as we have said, is a prominent feature of the
general industry of Ballarat, the prevailing business of this immediate
district is farming. It is now a great agricultural centre as well as a
gold-producing one, and this legitimate pursuit is becoming daily of
more and more importance,--thus once more demonstrating that even in
Eldorado gold-mining is a means to an end, not the grand object itself.
We were told that the great wheat-fields in this district have been
ploughed, planted, and reaped for fifteen consecutive years, without the
least thought on the part of the occupants of using any fertiliz