se,
he has to report on a "lease" whose only value is derived from its close
proximity to a rich show, and if that rich show only appears above the
surface in an isolated mass, and its direction of strike can only be
guessed at, and, above all, if he knows that his fee or future employment
depends on guessing that direction into the property under report, I think
he has been led into temptations from which most of us are exempt, and
which a good many would find it hard to resist. The term "expert" refers
only to the numerous army of "captains" and "mining experts" of mushroom
growth, for which the soil of the goldfields is so suitable, and is not
applied to the mining engineer of high standing, whose honourable and
straight dealing is unimpeachable.

Having brought the mine to such a state that it is ready to be purchased,
in which unsatisfactory position it sometimes remains for many long
months, I will now leave it, and will not touch upon "mills" and
"batteries," which are the same, or nearly so, in all countries, and are
outside the province of a prospector, who, from his limited capital, is
unable to erect the costly machinery necessary for the extraction of gold
from quartz on a large scale. Therefore the prospector parts with his mine
as soon as he can find a purchaser, usually an agent, who sells at a
profit to some company, which in its turn sells at a greater profit to the
British or Australian public.

The humbler prospector confines his attention to alluvial gold, that is to
say the gold which has been shed from the outcrop of the reef, by
weathering and disintegration. The present small rainfall, and the
evidence from the non-existence of river-beds, that the past rainfall was
no greater, go to show that this weathering is due to the sudden change in
temperature between night and day, the extreme dryness of the atmosphere,
and strong winds. Without any rush of water it is not possible for any
great depth of alluvial soil to have been formed, nor can the gold have
been carried far from the reef, or reefs, in which it has its origin. For
this reason, though exceptionally rich in places, the alluvial diggings
have never been either of great extent, or depth, or of general richness.

In many places the alluvial soil is not more than a few inches in
depth. It is in such places that "specking" may be carried on, which
consists in walking slowly about with eyes to the ground, and picking up
any nuggets that may