een the rain from above
and the spray of cascades below, offered a shelter from the storm.
I entered,--scaring innumerable flocks of bats striking against me,
blinded by the glare of the lightning that followed me into the cavern,
and hastening to resettle themselves on the pendants of stalactites, or
the jagged buttresses of primaeval wall.

From time to time the lightning darted into the gloom and lingered
amongst its shadows; and I saw, by the flash, that the floors on which I
stood were strewed with strange bones, some amongst them the fossilized
relics of races destroyed by the Deluge. The rain continued for more
than two hours with unabated violence; then it ceased almost as suddenly
as it had come on, and the lustrous moon of Australia burst from the
clouds shining bright as an English dawn, into the hollows of the
cave. And then simultaneously arose all the choral songs of the
wilderness,--creatures whose voices are heard at night,--the loud whir
of the locusts, the musical boom of the bullfrog, the cuckoo note of the
morepork, and, mournful amidst all those merrier sounds, the hoot of the
owl, through the wizard she-oaks and the pale green of the gum-trees.

I stepped forth into the open air and gazed, first instinctively on the
heavens, next, with more heedful eye, upon the earth. The nature of the
soil bore the evidence of volcanic fires long since extinguished. Just
before my feet, the rays fell full upon a bright yellow streak in the
block of quartz half imbedded in the soft moist soil. In the midst of
all the solemn thoughts and the intense sorrows which weighed upon heart
and mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction remote
from philosophy, quickened the heart to a beat that chimed with no
household affections. Involuntarily I stooped; impulsively I struck the
block with the hatchet, or tomahawk, I carried habitually about me, for
the purpose of marking the trees that I wished to clear from the waste
of my broad domain. The quartz was shattered by the stroke, and left
disburied its glittering treasure. My first glance had not deceived me.
I, vain seeker after knowledge, had, at least, discovered gold. I took
up the bright metal--gold! I paused; I looked round; the land that
just before had seemed to me so worthless took the value of Ophir. Its
features had before been as unknown to me as the Mountains of the Moon,
and now my memory became wonderfully quickened. I recalled the rough map
o