. Whereever mining
fields were opened, a gold commissioner with a police escort at his back
made his appearance as soon as possible, and insured a certain degree of
safety. Miners could leave their gold with the commissioner, either on
deposit, to be called for whenever they liked, or for transportation to
Melbourne. I presume you already know about the bushrangers and how they
used to plunder the homeward-bound miners."

"Were the early miners successful in finding large deposits of gold?"
one of the youths asked.

"The question is a difficult one to answer directly," was the reply. "A
great many were successful, but, on the other hand, a great many had
very poor luck in the mines and hardly succeeded in making a bare
living. We always hear of the rich finds in the mining district, but
rarely of the many failures. This has always been the case in gold
mining the world over, and Ballarat and the region around it were no
exception to the rule. I will tell you of some of the rich discoveries,
and leave you to remember that the fortunate miners were in small number
compared to the unfortunate ones. It may be safely said that the early
yield of the Ballarat mines exceeded that of the best days of
California.

"Some claims eight feet square yielded, each of them, from fifty
thousand to sixty thousand dollars. One mine, which was owned by several
men in common, was worked about four months and yielded eighty thousand
dollars to each man. One tubful of earth which was taken from the bottom
of a claim where the bed rock was scraped yielded nearly ten thousand
dollars, and one claim which was supposed to have been worked out, and
was abandoned, was again taken up by two men who obtained forty thousand
dollars from it in two weeks. Up to the present time it is estimated
that very nearly two billion dollars' worth of gold have been taken out
of Australian mines."

Ned asked in what shape the gold was found; that is, was it in large
pieces or small ones, fine dust or nuggets?

"It embraced everything between the large nugget and fine dust or
flakes," the gentleman replied. "A great deal of the gold was in little
lumps like bird shot; a great deal of it was in scales, and then, again,
it took the shape of dust so fine that the particles were almost
invisible to the naked eye. Nuggets the size of hens' eggs were not
very unusual, while those the size of pigeons' and sparrows' eggs were
much more numerous. The great nuggets were