ommon cradle, and although rich in gold, it would not repay the
trouble of washing. Upon this, the company broke up, each pursuing his
own way; and our adventurer and another agreed to go down the country
together to Maitland, prospecting on the way.

The place where the large mass of gold was found is an intersection
between two quartz-ridges, rising from a high table-land in the midst
of a congeries of mountains, offshoots from the range that extends
from Wilson's Point, on the south, to Cape York, on the north. The
clay soil covers many acres below and around the ridges, and wherever
it was prospected by our adventurer, gold was found. On the 12th of
September, he reached Maitland; and here he found a letter awaiting
him, which determined him to choose a new hunting-ground. Some years
before, it seems, a man he knew, who was at that time a shepherd in
the Wellington District, while crossing the country on his master's
business, lost his way in the gullies, and did not find it again for
two days. While sitting down, in his dilemma, on a quartz-rock, he
observed something glittering beside him, and breaking off with his
tomahawk a piece of the stone, he carried it home with him as a
curiosity. At home it lay for years, till the reported discoveries of
gold induced him to offer it for sale to a goldsmith in Sydney. The
result was, that he connected himself with a party of adventurers, and
they all set forth for the place where he had rested among the
gullies. His companions proved treacherous; and when they had come
sufficiently near to be able, as they thought, to find the spot
without his assistance, they turned him adrift. They sought the golden
rock for three days--but in vain; and he went back to Sydney, to
invite Mr Rutter to accompany him. Here ends our narrative for the
present; and a most instructive one it is. The search for gold, our
informant tells us plainly, is a mere lottery, its results depending
almost wholly upon chance. Plenty as the metal is, it frequently costs
twenty shillings the sovereign's worth; and, in short, we are at that
point of transition when the mania is dying away, and the science has
not begun. When capital and skill are brought to bear upon the process
of mining in Australia, it will become a regular, though by no means a
miraculously profitable business; and even at present, steady
labouring-men may spread themselves over thousands of miles of the
auriferous creeks, if they will be