oney is made by shrewd speculators in Melbourne and Sydney manipulating
the stock than is taken from the mines. A few years ago there was a wild
speculation in mines in what is called the 'Broken Hill' district of
Victoria, and at present there is an excitement about gold discoveries
in Western Australia. According to the latest accounts from the
last-named region, there is a difficulty in working the mines there on
account of the scarcity of water. You cannot work a mine any more than
you can run a steam-engine without water, and many people have paid very
dearly to ascertain this fact."

From Ballarat our friends went to Sandhurst, which was formerly called
Bendigo. They found there a mining region resembling Ballarat in its
general features, but not in all of them. At Ballarat the mines are not
in the town but in its suburbs, while at Sandhurst they are directly in
the town itself. One of the residents remarked that there was a gold
mine in every back yard, and our friends found that this was not very
far from the truth.

Mining operations were carried on in the rear or by the side of the
houses, and it was said that sometimes the dust of the streets was
gathered up and washed to obtain the gold in it. An individual who
certainly appeared credible, said that the first brick house ever built
in Bendigo was torn down and the bricks crushed in order to obtain the
gold in them; this gold amounted to three ounces per ton, and not only
the house but its chimney yielded handsomely of the precious metal.

Bendigo yielded enormously to the placer miners of the early days. When
the placer mines were exhausted the place was nearly deserted, and then
came the era of quartz mining the same as at Ballarat. Thousands of men
are employed at Sandhurst and in its neighborhood, working in the gold
mines or in the crushing establishments connected with them. The quartz
mines thus give employment to a great number of people. Some of the
mines have been pushed to a great depth, one of them being twenty-six
hundred feet below the surface. There seems to be an inexhaustible
supply of gold-bearing rock, and it is a common saying in Victoria that
a true ledge has never been exhausted.

Harry made some inquiries as to the amount of gold annually produced in
Victoria, and learned that it was not far from five million pounds
sterling, or twenty-five million dollars. He was further told that the
cost of production amounted to very nearly the s